Pls guys suggest to get somethings right regarding BARC TRP system. Have noticed lot of us on forum and SM may be having limited insight into what composites Indian BARC process and hence seem to be forming incorrect assumptions.
Earlier TAM system used for TRP's in India had lot of loopholes, very small sample size with several complaints registered, hence broadcasters, producers and advertisers banned it. That's where BARC got approved by all concerned TV industry bodies in 2015 as an alternative to TAM, but its still evolving during last couple of years. Sharing few details below that can give better clarity.
Only 30,000 sample Indian households with pre-fitted barometers on selective set boxes are currently being used as samples to calculate TRPs for monitoring weekly GEC viewership. And all these sample households are informed well in advance that their TV viewing is monitored and are also prior instructed what needs to be done from their end to record data.
Mind you all cable / DTH operators of India are NOT yet covered in these BARC samples as only few of them e.g.Tatasky could have got included. Also these 30,000 house panels do not cover all states of India from north to south and east to west, and within the covered states only few urban or rural regions are currently included. 😕 Now India is a hugely diverse nation with multiple tastes, choices and factors that impact daily TV viewing during prime time and TV can be watched from drawing rooms or bedrooms or even from work places using setboxes.
BARC said in its Oct 2017 press release that they are adding more regions exponentially and they also want to partner with most cable / DTH operators steadily so that their sample panels cover most of the platforms. They have a target to slowly increase samples between 1,50,000 to 2,00,000 households going forward. 😊
Next thing is BARC is still taking measures to make weekly data collection tamper free and has now decided to partner with DEN networks to use automatic RPD technology with a chip going forward by replacing its current process in India. Currently sample household viewers while changing channels have to manually press buttons not just on their regular TV remotes but also on an additional barometer remote for the sake of capturing BARC data .😳 (this has shown clear scope for data manipulation as this additional manual intervention can be halted for a long time knowingly or unknowingly).
So this indicates why sometimes weekly rating charts give us bouncers and also confuse us badly as to how a channel or said TV show does well or bad at a given time slot. 😛BARC now hopes with introduction of RPD technology in India which is already popular globally, manual button pressing process will get eliminated, thus data collected can be more timely and accurate.
So this sample size and data collection process of BARC is still vague, but they acknowledge loopholes and are taking appropriate measures to fix them and make data collection and analytics process on TV more transparent, automatic, accurate also with bigger sample size... Lets see by when RPD technology comes properly into force in India as installations may take some time and then can clearly observe changes in rating charts.
Edited by LA2725 - 7 years ago
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