BARC India partners with Airtel DTH to measure TV viewership

Television rating agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India today said it has partnered with direct to home operator Airtel Digital TV to include its subscriber homes into the BARC India RPD (return path data) Panel. This partnership will provide a fillip to BARC Indias plan of scaling up panel homes to multiples of the mandated 50,000, the agency said in a statement. In October last year, BARC India had signed on multi-system operator DEN Networks for measuring TV viewership using RPD. By tying up with Airtel Digital TV, BARC India has added a significant DTH subscriber base to its proposed RPD panel. BARC India will use a portion of Airtel Digital TVs subscriber base to measure TV viewership via RPD. "Our partnership with Airtel Digital TV will strengthen our RPD rollout plan. Panel home expansion is absolutely critical for us considering the diversity in the country which is visible even in the way TV content is consumed. RPD, will give the industry a cost-effective way of expanding panel home size. The distribution platform owners too will benefit with RPD. It will give them a better understanding into what their subscribers are consuming on TV.

This will help the industry at large, BARC India chief business officer Romil Ramgarhia said. RPD is used globally for collecting viewership data. However, BARC Indias plan to integrate it into TV Viewership currency is a global first. Random selection will be done among the selected RPD homes to include them in the currency panel basis overall Airtel Digital TV universe share in the TV ecosystem, it said. Commenting on the tie-up Bharti Airtel DTH Chief Executive Officer Sunil Taldar said, "We are pleased to partner BARC India and support their endeavour of compiling robust TV viewership insights. A credible resource like this will benefit the entire ecosystem including content producers, marketers and help in enhancing the experience for customers.

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