According to sources cited by Business Standard on Friday, Zee Media, which operates 14 national and regional news stations in 10 languages, has left the Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC).
The company, which is a part of the Essel group, informed the TV viewer measurement organisation of its decision to cancel the service subscription in a letter on Friday night. This means that the Zee news channels won’t be covered by the BARC viewership, according to sources.
New Delhi Television (NDTV), which broadcasts Hindi and English news channels, withdrew from BARC in March, claiming that it had reaffirmed the need for a larger sample of metres to periodically gauge viewership.
Other news outlets, like as Republic TV, have made the same claim in addition to NDTV.
The sample size for BARC is 44,000 person metres.
The organisation stopped news viewership statistics between October 2020 and March 2022 to raise its sample size to 50,000 persons metres. However, industry analysts claimed that attempts to expand the number had been hindered by the Covid-19 outbreak.
However, BARC changed how it reported viewership for news channels in particular by using a four-week rolling average of audience estimates to determine viewership figures for a given programme.
BARC changed the way it reported viewership for news channels in particular, using a four-week rolling average of audience estimates to determine viewership figures for a given week. According to BARC, this would increase the stability of numbers.