New Delhi : According to the new viewership measurement system that will be introduced by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) in the near future, requires the watermarking of channels which are willing to subscribe the new TV ratings based on audio watermarking system.
As many as 250 channels in the country had already ordered for watermarking and 50% of them had already got the watermarking done to gear up for the subscription of new ratings.
Doordarshan, which has been a founding member of the measurement council, got 21 of its channels watermarked as per the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India’s standards for viewership ratings. The cost of watermarking each channel stands around 20 Lacs and it seems DD had spent around Rs 4.5 Cr to complete the process.
Unlike TAM ratings, the BARC ratings has announced that it will be allocating 30% of its overall samples for Rural audience which is expected to benefit the Public broadcaster Doordarshan as they hope that the increase of sample in rural market will help DD to improve their ratings.
Netherlands based company Civolition has offered the watermarking technology to BARC and field testing of the meters is underway for homologating them to Indian conditions. As BARC India always wanted meters to be assembled in India at much cheaper rates when compared with the cost of global vendors.
