New Delhi: Television ratings will no longer be a closed door affair, which are available for the access of Television Broadcasters and Advertising agencies as the new initiative by counties new Television Measurement agency, Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) will take the weekly TV ratings to general public through the social media platform Twitter.
In a first of its kind move, BARC India has tied up with Twitter to make weekly television viewership data accessible to viewers through the #BARCTweet hash-tag.
A hashtagged tweet seeking information on the top five Bengali programmes in the last one week will now get a user the exact data in a response from @BARCIndia within two minutes. Ratings data so far has been accessed mostly by the television and broadcast industry and the business ecosystem around it but now common people could also get such information. Users of such data could be many. One big set could be writers, actors and others associated with television shows and programming. Others could be people within the industry — broadcasters, advertisers, agencies — who are already subscribed to BARC data at work but might sometimes require topline TV audience ratings data on-the-go.
“We got a lot of request for such topline data. This service will help people access that data, bringing in transparency,” said Partho Dasgupta, CEO, BARC India, adding that it will also help companies and individuals outside the country who might be looking at the Indian television market.
While BARC India’s subscribers have access to all the data on a weekly basis, this service is available free of cost to any non-subscriber.
BARC India’s move is totally contradicting to the practice of TAM Media Research, which has kept the whole thing a closed door affair restricted to Broadcasters, Ad Agencies and Selective Media Houses only.
TAM Media Research has also enforced a non disclosure declaration clause in its Terms and Conditions of data usage Agreement with all the Subscribers that strictly prohibited them from sharing certain important details like GRPs and TRPs to others outside the organisation.
#BARCTweet hashtag is expected to be a trending tags in twitter in couple of weeks.
