News channel wars resume as BARC restarts ratings
Premium- Aaj Tak has claimed the biggest market share in Hindi and Times Now in the English new genre
NEW DELHI : The viewership data for television news channels released to its subscribers after a 17-month gap by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, seems to have revived the channels wars with several of them claiming leadership positions by slicing and dicing data to suit their purpose. Aaj Tak has claimed the biggest market share in Hindi and Times Now in the English new genre. As per data cited by them, Aaj Tak has a market share of 24.9%, followed by TV9 Bharatvarsh at 22.85% and Republic Bharat at 19.4%. In the English category, Times Now has cornered 30% market share, closely followed by Republic TV at 29% and India Today at 12%.
This data is based on the four-week rolling average and reflects the market share garnered by channels between 18 February and 10 March, 2022. As per directions from the ministry of information and broadcasting, individual channels will also have access to data on just their own performance, and not that of rivals, for the past 13 weeks, if they opt for it.
However, in Hindi, TV9 Bharatvarsh has claimed leadership for the week March 5 to March 11 with a market share of 16.8% ahead of Aaj Tak at 14.8% share. Commenting on the success of his channel, Barun Das, CEO, TV9 Bharatvarsh and TV9 News Network, said BARC ratings only reveal what some people wanted to hide. "We always knew that we were destined to be the leader. I am happy that the ratings released today have offered empirical evidence of our leadership. I am amused that the only business strategy the legacy channels had to stop the rise of TV9 Bharatvarsh was to stop the ratings itself. And glad that the interest and the verdict of the viewers has finally prevailed," he said.
A media industry executive said on condition of anonymity that the four-week rolling average system has retained AajTak on top in the Hindi genre but the second and third players are new entrants. “Given that the past few weeks saw Lata Mangeshkar’s demise, the Ukraine war, polling and counting, they would have been closely followed. It’ll be interesting to see how based on the augmented four-week reporting, industry players decide their strength and weaknesses and plan ahead," the person said.
In a statement, the TV audience measurement agency BARC said that the ratings have been resumed after developing the Augmented Data Reporting Standards for News and Special Interest genres, aligned with the industry’s needs. As per these revised approved standards, audience estimates for these genres will only be released based on a four-week rolling average, every week, it added.
“Media agencies and clients look for broad trends when they buy commercial time on news channels. Therefore, this new format of four-week rolling average works. Usually, news channels are bought in clusters by bunching the top performers. Also, their performance for the last 10-12 weeks is considered," said Shashi Sinha, CEO, IPG Mediabrands, expressing relief at the resumption of news ratings but declining to comment on individual channels.
“The last two years have been extremely tough, with the pandemic transforming the world. The news space saw an added disruption with alleged malpractices unearthed in the ratings system impacting viewer sentiment. There was trepidation when approaching the date, as to how news consumption has changed and how that would impact our shares. We are happy to note that our efforts to keep up with changing consumer preferences has been reciprocated by viewers," MK Anand, managing director and CEO, Times Network said.
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Times Now has seen an increase in reach and time spent and its gross ratings have jumped by 20% compared to 2020, he added.
On restarting the ratings, BARC said the review process has not only resulted in a statistically sound and effective solution which works in the interest of the entire ecosystem but has also helped evolve changes in the reporting for Special Interest Genre Channels. A genre would be classified as ‘Special Interest’ when the tuned sample, that is, reach and/or average time spent are lower compared to other genres.
Viewership data for news channels was suspended by BARC in October 2020 following reports of alleged rigging of ratings by some TV channels where Republic TV was also named. The agency had then said it was suspending publishing weekly data for news to review and augment the current standards of measurement and reporting data.
TRP manipulation had surfaced when Mumbai police said it has busted a racket based on complaints received from BARC India and Hansa – a consumer insights company and a vendor of BARC -- about "suspicious trends" and activities where some panel homes were paid to keep their television sets on to spike viewership of some channels.
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