Mumbai : The Board members of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India have decided to release the much awaited rural data, starting next week.
With this, BARC India, which currently reports about 55 million households representing C&S universe of 1 Lac+, will expand its reach to 153.5 million TV households, representing All India and all modes of signal. Of this 77.5 million are urban TV households and 76 million are rural TV households.
BARC India, which had recently announced a joint venture with TAM Media to form a meter management company, is working on the dynamics of it and will soon announce its integration plan.
“With the board giving us the go ahead to release the rural data, one will see ‘What India Watches’. We will be releasing the data starting week 41” said BARC India CEO Partho Dasgupta.
Earlier, BARC India had conducted a Roadshow in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore to brief the television consumption pattern in Rural India during the first week of September and it was expected that the Rural ratings will be released by end of September. However, it got pushed back for unknown reasons that disappointed Prasar Bharati, which was eagerly awaiting the release of Rural data from BARC India to kick start their new sales strategy to increase their revenue.
BARC India’s Rural data is expected to create major impact on the inventory selling pattern of many broadcasters as the Measurement agency was suggesting the Broadcasters during the Roadshow to start selling their FCTs based on GVTs instead of the existing pattern of CPRP based selling to maximize their ad rates.
