The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), has taken significant strides in enhancing its meter count for measuring TV audiences. According to reports, BARC has increased its meter count to 59,000 and is actively working towards achieving a target of 65,000 in the near future.
Utilizing Bar-O-meters to collect crucial TV viewership data, BARC is consistently adding new meters on a monthly basis to meet its goal. This expansion reflects BARC’s commitment to providing comprehensive and accurate insights into the television viewership landscape in India.
In a previous interview with Storyboard18, Shashi Sinha, chairman of BARC India had said, “The government has clear guidelines that say that panel size shall be increased by 10,000 every year.We are in sync with that.”
Talking on how increasing panel homes help he had said, “BARC is a very robust currency but there are certain smaller segments like the news genre where the sample is very small so the chances of variations are very high and increasing the panel homes reduces that.This kind of sample size reduces infiltrations of any sort.”
A lot of people do not know about another rule that the guidelines from the ministry highlights. The rule says 25 percent of the panel homes shall be rotated every year.
“The rotation is to be done in such a manner that older panel homes are removed first while maintaining the representativeness of the panel. This rotation is expected to be achieved in a staggered manner by rotating panel homes every month. All of this helps in better and fairer measurement of data,” he said.