 "PARTHO DASGUPTA")
Broadcast Audience Research Council or BARC, now the world’s largest television audience measurement service, has completed a year. After its joint venture with TAM, it is now the only ratings body in the Rs 54,200-crore Indian TV sector. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar spoke to BARC Chief Executive Officer Partho Dasgupta on what the year has been like. Edited excerpts.
Where is BARC currently on homes, meters, total audience covered and so on?
BARC measures viewership habits of India’s 153.5 million TV households. Of these, 77.5 mn are in urban India, and 76 mn are in rural India. Currently, 22,000 homes are seeded with BAR-O-Meters. In the second year of operation, we will expand our panel homes by 10,000, as mandated by government guidelines.
What are the big gaps?
India poses a huge challenge for any audience measurement system due to its vastness and heterogeneity of population. Added the fact that India is used to very segmental data, globally unprecedented.
A channel or genre’s viewership could be very low and yet they would do hair-splitting analysis in spite of our advisories on the contrary. This poses a big challenge for our statisticians.
The second is the practice in India of knowing “why” and not only “what” from the data. This is also something that we don’t see in other countries. When we set up BARC India, we did not anticipate the quantum of manpower needed. This impacted our capability to respond quickly to queries from subscribers, who were also coming to terms with the new system. But, we were able to quickly take corrective steps.
How many subscribers does the BARC data have? What proportion of the industry uses the currency?
There are currently over 3000 BARC Media Workstations (BMW) deployed in the industry, running our software, crunching our data and giving insights to our subscribers. In terms of coverage, there are over 460 channels that have adopted our watermarking technology; this accounts for over 97% of Indian TV viewership and adverting revenue. If you include language feeds, we are actually tracking about 523 TV channels. Agencies deciding 90% of advertising revenues are also a part of BARC India system. We are seeing increasing interest for our data from advertisers as well.
The big learnings?
The biggest for us and the industry is that the past can’t predict the future. Content drives ratings. But, along with content changes, viewership is extremely sensitive to various external stimuli like distribution, events/incidents that happen in real time and so on. When we began reporting data, as it was, it did take the sector some time to understand and accept it. When Kapil Sharma is absent on his show or whether Arnab (Goswami) on Newshour, the ratings drop. When there are severe power cuts in Karnataka, the ratings drop and it comes up when the power situation improves. The kids’ genre predictably shows increase in viewership as schools go on vacation and again drops when they restart.
How does the TAM JV help? What stage is it at?
The industry was looking for a single TV viewership measurement body. The JV agreement is in place, and the joint meter management company, Meterology Data Ltd (MDL) has been formed. Uninstalling of TAM Peoplemeters is currently underway, post which they will be re-deployed in BARC India panel homes, as per our panel design. Once re-deployment is complete, data from 30,000 panel home will begin flowing to BARC India servers. They will be fused and ultimately published through our BMW software.
Is what the data shows, on broad trends significantly different from TAM? Why or why not?
The two are not comparable as the technology we use is totally different. Also our coverage (All India urban plus rural) is vastly bigger, and we report data on the basis of the New Consumer Calssification System (NCCS) which is unlike the old Socio-economic Classification (SEC). BARC reports viewership of 658 million individuals as compared to TAM’s 277 million individuals.
The minister for communications, Ravi Shankar Prasad made some remarks about the inadequacy of rating systems, even under BARC, at FICCI-Frames. Comment?
BARC India strictly follows government guidelines on the matter. We have expanded the coverage - with a doubling of sample homes to 20000 within the first year of launch, and inclusion of rural India for the first time ever. We have plans for expanding as per government guidelines too.
We are a joint industry body. The number of our meters are dictated by industry’s appetite for data vis-à-vis capacity to spend on data gathering. We feel that at this stage, our sample size is adequate to meet those twin considerations. However, accuracy, robustness and fidelity of data derived from sample surveys is dependent not just on sample size but also on level of sophistication of statistical and modelling tools deployed.
One of the big issues with TAM was the sample size, allegations of data fixing at ground level and of cherry-picking by broadcasters. How has BARC fared on these fronts?
We have a sensitive tracking mechanism that helps us quickly identify unusual viewer behaviour, backed by a vigilant on-ground team which escalates any such issue. Whenever we see suspicious behaviour, we first quarantine those homes and investigate further. We had recently found out about a few panel homes that had been compromised, and we immediately took them out of the reporting system and declared the same to subscribers.
At the end of the day, however, we are a joint industry body, engaged in measurement of TV viewing and data analytics. If we are to learn from the past and avoid pitfalls, the industry (and we are a part of it) has to come together and ensure steps that are preventive in nature. There is consensus within sector on matters of integrity and I will not be surprised if we slowly move towards self-regulation on this aspect, just like how the BCCC (Broadcasting Content Complaints Council) operates on the content side.
Where is BARC on the issue of niche/speciality channels not getting enough of a sample for robust data to be generated about them?
First of all, globally, such channels are not measured the way we do with all granularity. For example, some of the largest global English news brands use quarterly reports to understand viewership. These are not even metered audiences. At BARC, we spend a lot of time analysing these genres and channels since they are more difficult to measure owing to lower incidence of viewing.
The thing to be recognised is that this is a sample study and not Census. In case of niche channels, which have low viewership, we always advise taking a much larger period to come to any derivative conclusions. When you slice and dice the data for a niche channel, the relative error increases, thus showing volatile numbers which effectively provide no meaningful insights. There are many countries which do not report data for channels below a specific threshold and even if they report, they do not report at a weekly frequency. In India, the issue is multiplicity of channels which accentuates with the habit of analysing granular data which makes no statistical sense.
However, we also recognise needs of niche channels, for instance English news, infotainment, lifestyle and so on. Their viewership base is concentrated in six mega-cities, and among higher NCCS (New Consumer Classification System) strata. To address their specific needs, we launched a monthly bouquet service called Alpha Club in November last year, and it has been received very well. We have also been engaging with them constantly to figure out other solutions.
Do broadcasters react badly if they don't like what the data shows? How do you handle situations like those?
We as a Joint Industry Body listen to our stakeholders. When the data doesn’t show the results that the broadcasters expected, they obviously are upset. But, this was more so in the early days, when they were still understanding our data, which was high on fidelity. Over time, they have understood that we present the data as it is, and any changes only reflect the nature of the TV viewer. Fidelity is good and broadcasters now understand this.
"How much of your job is handling the egos of the big broadcasters since the Indian Broadcasting Foundation is one of the shareholders?"
(laughs) We all have egos isn’t it? As long as we know where to draw the line its fine.
Where is BARC on digital measurement and how will this be fused with linear TV data?
The goal of our digital measurement initiative is to measure gross and de-duplicated consumer media exposures across platforms, across devices. Regardless of where and how content is consumed, we will be in a position to measure it. We are currently at the request for proposal stage. Vendor evaluation will start this month.
