Talking to BestMediaInfo.com, NDTV’s Group President Suparna Singh denied that they have decided to pull out from BARC data because the channel saw a ray of hope in RPD data coming from Airtel Xstream Connected TV.

By Akansha Srivastava

Days before the scheduled return of the ratings for news genre, the consensus is far from building in the TV news industry. On Saturday, NDTV announced it was exiting BARC India, just two weeks before the ratings were to be released.

Just hours before this development, a news story appeared on PTI claiming that BARC India was thinking of deferring the release of data.

In a details interview with BestMediaInfo.com, NDTV Group President Suparna Singh explained the reasons behind the news broadcaster's exit from BARC.

Singh said that low sample size to measure ratings is the primary reason behind their decision to pull out.

"Manipulation is very easy with the small sample size that BARC has right now. Even a small-scale rigging of the peoplemeters skews the ratings completely. The larger the sample size, the harder it is to manipulate it. Even with the number of meters currently in use, we never get a straight answer on how many actually are used to measure news and what is the split between Hindi and English news,” Singh said.

"When it comes down to actually expanding the sample size, for some reason, there seems to be some amount of resistance on the part of BARC. Whenever we asked what will it cost to increase the number of meters, we did not get clear answers and explanations,” she added.

Has NDTV misread the situation?

BARC India held a webinar to share details about the changes it has made in processing and presenting the data. An industry insider told BestMediaInfo.com that the checks put in place by BARC were largely convincing.


Full story: https://bestmediainfo.com/2022/03/ndtv-opts-out-from-barc-data-again-will-the-move-backfire/