Amid the TRP racket, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) has paused the measurement of television viewership ratings of news channels for a period of 12 weeks with immediate effect. This includes Hindi, Regional, English News and Business News channels.
BARC issued an official statement and said, "In the light of the recent developments, BARC Board has proposed that it's Technical Committee (Tech Comm) review and augment the current standards of measuring and reporting the data of niche genres, to improve their statistical robustness and to significantly hamper the potential attempts of infiltrating the panel homes."
- BARC will not publish the weekly individual ratings for all news channels during this period.
- BARC will, however, release weekly audience estimates for the news genre by state and language.
- Expected to take around 8-12 weeks
- To be tested and validated under the supervision of BARCs Tech Comm.
