Government oversight ‘not acceptable', says Indian TV ratings body

INDIA-- The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) has slammed proposals that would lead to government oversight of a new industry-agreed TV ratings system in India.

The nascent joint industry committee said calls to include representatives of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) on its board were “not acceptable” - even with a provision that the government nominees would have no voting rights.

“BARC supports the principle and objectives of self-regulation and self-administration for broadcast audience measurement,” said the council. “This implicitly precludes intervention or oversight, directly or indirectly, by government.”

The council was also irked by a call for the MIB to be made responsible for setting the key eligibility criteria for media research agencies seeking to tender for the future BARC ratings contract.

BARC said: “It is for the user groups to determine eligibility and performance norms, through such means as they consider appropriate to the task… What specialist knowledge or demonstrated expertise MIB has in this regard is not evident.”

Under proposed rules, agencies would not be eligible to compete for the BARC contract if they are owned or part-owned by either a broadcaster, advertiser or advertising agency. This would rule out TAM Media Research, which provides the de facto currency in the market. TAM is a joint venture between research group Nielsen and IMRB – the latter in turn being part of WPP, the world's largest ad group.

TAM said it “strongly” advocates full-disclosure of the ownership patterns of ratings agencies “so the industry is fully aware of the implications of buying into such a service”. However, it said: “Shrinking the industry by preventing a reputed agency, especially one that has a proven track record, from participating in the research process seems unfair.”

Both BARC and TAM's comments were in response to a set of draft recommendations published late last month by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Their comments were only made public last week.

TRAI was tasked with assessing whether the government needed to intervene in the ratings industry following complaints of “deficiencies” in existing TV audience measurement systems.

The authority has since gone on to release its final recommendations, but these are largely unchanged from the draft. They are now with the MIB for approval.

Author: Brian Tarran