Will SS TRPs Increase ?

From tomorrow onwards the Indian broadcast and media industry will witness a major change with the introduction of a new audience measurement system.

BARC-Broadcast Audience Research Council India (backed by the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), and Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA)) will roll out its ratings this month. That means, it's all set to replace 15-year-old TAM Media, which has dominated the TV ratings space for several years.

According to our sources, "Most of the broadcasters' are not happy with the way data was collected. TAM subscriptions of Viacom18 and TV18 will expire today(March 31, 2015) and if sources are to be believed, they have decided not to extend their subscriptions. Also Star TV India, Zee Network, Discovery India, Star Sports, India TV & NDTV India are amongst broadcasters who have also sent in their termination letters to TAM India. Now quite a few broadcasters and advertising agencies have signed up for BARC and have not renewed their contracts with TAM."

TAM has been mired in controversies for some time has earned flak for having only about 10,000 people-metres to measure television viewing in the country. The new system aims to start operations with at least 20,000 people metres to provide deeper measurement of television viewing habits in the country.

BARC is very different from the existing system owned by Television Audience Measurement (TAM), and will capture data about TV content consumed through any form of distribution, be it terrestrial, DTH, analog cable, digital cable or digital