Zee Media exits from BARC Ratings

Zee Media has raised concern over the whole structure of the ratings agency and their operation transparency towards the news industry.

In a bold and decisive decision Zee Media has decided to quit from BARC Ratings. This decision is a milestone for the whole News media industry, there are more than 5-8 million people associated with news and broadcasting industry at large who get impacted adversely if incorrect reporting is published by the rating agencies and it has been observed in last few months that news genre is being shown shrunk by the BARC (rating agency )to extend the benefit to GEC and other genre at large.

Zee Media had raised its concern multiple times to BARC and had questioned the whole structure and their operation transparency towards the news industry which represents MEDIA and is usually termed as the fourth pillar of democracy. It is pertinent to point over here that the Rating agency has failed to rectify News Industry’s and Zee Media’s concerns.

BARC has not given any white paper on TRP Scam until now and its a matter of great concern that who all were involved in this malpractice and if are still part of the system (people/channels) and what action has been taken against them…?

Biggest concern and challenge is that BARC has not given any solution nor accepted as they are continuing reporting for Landing Pages & barker pages which impact ratings favourably for those who use these at the peril of others who do not subscribe to these unethical practices.

Secondly News genre is continuously shown shrinking since BARC Data was restarted, while on the Contrary when the data was stopped ,Genre was at its peak. In spite of multiple meetings and conversation with BARC, agency not only failed but has not been able to explain such a steep fall. drastic change in viewership is hurting News genre’s Revenue/perception to the advertising fraternity,this is the biggest fall in last 25-30 years of the industry which is unprecedented and far from reality.

The company in its official statement said: "We have repeatedly pointed out that a far larger sample (of meters) is needed if BARC is serious about ensuring a measurement process that cannot be rigged or manipulated I, which also they failed to address until now.

Digitally Zee News is no.1 in ComScore as well as in You Tube which is the real data and cannot be manipulated. However, BARC ratings shows the completely opposite and different picture , while Same content is placed to both platforms and again points out to inconsistencies of reporting methodology.

BARC’s new process of data reporting (4 weeks rolling average vis.a.vis earlier daily/weekly) is also a big concern and due to this the research has no meaning or outcome to the content producers and they cannot plan or validate content performance.

BARC is unable to answer or addresses any of our queries /questions/suggestions. On whole as industry body, we believe that due to monopoly of rating agency the industry is suffering at large Hence Zee Media decided to move from rating agency and we have asked them to stop reporting Zee Media’s all 14 channels with immediate effect."