Mumbai: In a landmark overhaul of its data reporting system for news broadcasters, the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India has announced it will discontinue the long-standing four-week rolling average viewership format and shift exclusively to reporting weekly unrolled data for all television genres. The change takes effect from Week 24’25 (14th to 20th June 2025), with the first set of weekly viewership estimates to be released on June 26, 2025.
As part of this transition, BARC has clarified that historical unrolled data—pertaining to the period when only rolled averages were shared (Week 10’22 to Week 23’25)—will not be made available retrospectively. This means advertisers and broadcasters will only have access to weekly unrolled data from the new reporting cycle onward.
The industry body has also issued an advisory urging users not to compare Average Daily Reach Share (ADRS) or any other metrics based on rolled data with the new weekly unrolled figures, citing methodological differences that could distort trends and interpretation.
According to BARC, the revised methodology is intended to provide advertisers, broadcasters, and media planners with sharper, real-time insights into audience behaviour. Weekly snapshots of performance will help foster greater transparency and accountability in the Indian television ecosystem.
BARC has implemented four week average ratings starting in Week 10 of 2022, effective from March 17, 2022, the data was presented under a single login to ensure fairness among all channels within the BARC ecosystem. The shift to weekly unrolled data has been widely welcomed by several stakeholders, especially news broadcasters, who have long demanded a more immediate and transparent measurement framework. Industry observers see this as a progressive step toward strengthening data credibility and building advertiser confidence in TV ratings.
