About ₹280 crore is being invested to roll out the new rating mechanism for television. Called the Broadcaster Audience Research Council (BARC), the new rating mechanism is expected go on stream in a couple of days.

The new system is seen as a replacement to the existing ratings provider, TAM (a joint venture between Nielsen and Kantar).

BARC was formed in 2012 by the Indian Broadcasting Foundation which has a 60 per cent stake, the Indian Society of Advertisers and the Advertising Agencies Association of India each of whom have a 20 per cent stake. Several broadcasters are understood to have already become a part of the pilot project of BARC.

When contacted, BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta said ₹280 crore has been committed to this project of which ₹100 crore has been invested by broadcasters for deploying watermarking technology.

On how different BARC will be from existing players like TAM, Dasgupta said besides being transparent, BARC will also involve all stakeholders. “BARC India uses an advanced, audience measurement technique — audio watermarking, to track content through its broadcast cycle. This is a code inserted into the audio channel of the television signal which transmits through the distribution platforms and cannot be, either deleted or overwritten in the cryptographic family it adopts. This increases the integrity and reliability of the data generated by BARC’s ratings and each channel being watched by the viewer can be identified uniquely by the system,” Dasgupta said.

Data capture The BARC India system will also capture data about TV content consumed through any form of distribution – terrestrial, DTH , analog cable and digital cable.

On funding and potential revenue, Dasgupta said, “We raised ₹180 crore through debt finance from banks to set up the system. The intention, over a period of time, is to make BARC India self-funded. BARC India is targeting subscription revenues in the range of ₹150 crore.” BARC aims to start operations with at least 20,000 audience measurement metres to provide deeper measurement of television viewing habits in the country.

Anjan Mitra, Executive Director, CASBAA India, an association for cable, satellite, broadband and wireless video networks, said, “it is a new currency in audience measurement and it looks more scientific. Besides, they have also followed government guidelines regarding the audience measurements”.

“The sample size is key to any measurement. BARC’s sample size and technology seem robust and they are trying to cover tier-2 and -3 cities as well,” Samir Nair, CEO, Balaji Telefilms, said.

BARC’s audience measurement meters are called ‘barometres’ unlike rival TAM’s meters which are called ‘peoplemeters’.

Industry experts BusinessLine spoke to indicated that several stakeholders were unhappy with the existing system due to lack of transparency, small sample size and also outdated technology which was coming in the way of collecting authentic data.

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