The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) began the new year with an upgradation plan, increasing the meter count from 55,000 to 59,000. The rating agency aims to take this number further up to 65,000 in the near future. The decision to install new meters came amidst industry demands for more transparency and accuracy in the rating process. However, though adding more meters will surely improve the sample size and bring in more precision, will the number be enough to reflect the true viewership choices of a country that has over 200 million TV households, including free-to-air, connected TV and Pay TV subscribers?
e4m spoke to industry leaders for the answer. Most of the experts we approached feel that while an increase in the number of meters is a welcome move, it is surely not enough. And not just the meter count,BARCneeds to bring in several other changes to stay relevant, they say.
Industry sources say it is not just the smallernumber of metersbut also the slow pace of installation of these meters that makes the whole purpose insignificant in this digital age when measurement is being done real-time. Until 2017, there were 30,000 bar-o-meters, and until 2019, the number was 45,000, said reliable sources. As of December 2022, BARC had 55,000 TV meters.
Says Karan Taurani, Senior Vice President, Elara Capital, “The number of TV meters was around 45,000 just about more than four years ago. So, it is going at a slow pace. We are now in a digital era and getting data is much easier through digital technology. In a country with over 200 million TV households, there is very little relevance of 60,000 boxes (meters), because on the other end you got digital advertising wherein you can get data on a real time basis.”
Another industry source said that BARC is becoming “irrelevant” with the kind ofsmall sampling sizethey have and it is led by metered boxes and not by any kind of digital technology.
“The need of the hour is to come up with a system by which we can monitor the TV boxes on a real-time basis and move to a much larger number. It could be 10-20% of the overall base because nearly 60,000 out of a market of 200 million households won’t do any good,” the expert said.
A seniorbroadcastperson said that BARC did well earlier because digital had not taken over and the smartphone penetration was also poorer compared to now.
Since the time digital has scaled up and with cheaper data prices and smartphone penetration, the relevance of BARC has reduced as people are drifting towards digital and looking for ROI led and data led campaigns which the global giants are offering the advertisers, another source said.
How does the measurement system work?
BARC India attributes viewing to the minute. If a TV set is on for 30 seconds or more in a clock minute, it is attributed as being on for the entire clock minute.
The BAR-O-meter captures TV usage, TV station identification, and individual viewing through the use of two digital devices: one installed by the broadcaster (embedder) at the station head end/transmission site(s) and the other – referred to as the BAR-O-Meter – that is installed on each TV set in the panel households.
BAR-O-meters fetch data directly from TV channels by watermarking the audio. Currently there are more than 600 channels watermarked by BARC.
In the BAR-O-Meter measurement system, TV On and Off status is determined by the presence or absence of a watermarked channel. Since viewership of non-watermarked channels is not captured by the BAR-O-Meter, any viewing of non-watermarked channels is considered as TV Off.
The meters have embedded audio tracks in all the channels that it monitors. For instance, if you tune into Star Plus, it starts emanating a silent (to human ear) audio which the BAR-O-meter listens to. For measurement, the BAR-O-meter does not require the channel number, but only the channel audio.
