Television ratings remain true to purpose: BARC India CEO Sunil Lulla

Mumbai: Viewership monitoring agency and joint industry body BARC India said its television ratings continue to “remain true to purpose,” amid a Mumbai police investigation into the alleged manipulation of viewership data. BARC India CEO Sunil Lulla acknowledged in a letter to subscribers that the agency is “not insulated” from intrusion attempts by “unscrupulous individuals” through various forms of inducement, despite having more than 44,000 metered households spread across the entire country. ET has reviewed a copy of the letter. However, BARC India has taken several steps to ensure that these attempts are “quickly identified” and the homes are “de-installed,” negating their impact, if any, on audience estimates, he said. “It is important to recognise that any attempt to compromise panel homes or influence viewership through unscrupulous means is unlawful, and BARC has strictly followed our established Vigilance and Disciplinary Committee guidelines to deal with such isolated attempts,” he wrote.78611910 The matter came to light last week after Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh called a press conference to announce that it had uncovered a racket involving the alleged manipulation of Television Rating Points (TRP) by paying people to watch the Republic TV channel in order to attract advertising revenues worth crores of rupees. Singh had named Arnab Goswami-owned news channel Republic TV and two small Marathi TV channels–Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema–in the alleged scam. While subscribers may have read a wide range of news reports, as a data science driven joint industry body, BARC dealt only in facts and evidence, Lulla said in the letter. BARC India said it had authorised subsidiary Meterology Data (MDL), which functions at arm’s length, to install and operate the viewership meters through its authorised vendors, including Hansa Market Research. Hansa, the complainant in the first information report (FIR) filed at Kandivali, was authorised to undertake panel home installation, maintenance and operations in Mumbai on behalf of MDL under conditions of strict confidentiality, it said. After BARC’s vigilance team reported that five panel homes serviced by Hansa were showing some data abnormalities, the latter was advised to investigate further. Based on suspicions that an employee was involved in tampering with data and influencing panel household members, Hansa made a complaint, on the basis of which Mumbai police registered the FIR.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/2SLhrpV