Important BARC issues RFI for new TV audience measurement system

[IndianMascot]

The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) today issued a global Request for Information (RFI) to seek understanding of the state-of-the-art in the area of television audience measurement research in particular and audience measurement research in more general terms.

Punit Goenka, Chairman, BARC and MD & CEO, ZEE, said, “BARC is committed to building a television audience measurement system that becomes ipso facto the gold standard in its class worldwide. Given that BARC addresses a population of over 1 billion, of which over 0.6 billion have access to television in some form, I am confident that BARC will settle for nothing less than being the best.”

Television audience measurement in India has been around for nearly three decades. Beginning with a simple diary based system in the early 1980s covering Doordarshan, then the state-owned monopoly broadcaster, it evolved parallel to the evolution of the Indian TV market. By the mid-1990s, it was already covering satellite television and in the early part of this century, India was one of the earliest television markets to have a pure Peoplemeter based system.


Broadcast Audience Research Council
c/o Indian Broadcasting Foundation
B-304, Third Floor, Ansal Plaza,
Khel Gaon Marg, Andrews Ganj,
New Delhi – 110 049.
Email: [email protected]

The TechComm team comprising Shashi Sinha, Chairman, representing Advertising Agencies Association of India), Paritosh Joshi, Member, TechComm, and Principal Provocateur Advisory (representing Indian Broadcasting Foundation), and Smita Bhosale, Member, TechComm, and Head, CMI-Brand Building-South Asia, Hindustan Unilever (representing Indian Society of Advertisers) would evaluate the responses.

Respondents will receive the Request for Proposal (RFP) that will follow after the BARC concludes its study of the inputs received. It must be made clear that non response to this RFI will preclude further participation in the process that will lead up to the New Television Audience Measurement System.

Annexure: Some areas respondents may consider addressing

1. In-house knowledge and experience in the Television and more broadly, Media Audience Measurement space
2. Global best practices in a number of areas including
   1. Vendor owned and managed vs. Joint Industry Body (JIB) or Joint Industry Committee (JIC) owned and managed – Advantages and Disadvantages
   2. System architecture- Establishment, Metering, other services
   3. One vendor or many vendors
   4. If multiple vendors, how scopes of work are clearly delineated
   5. If multiple vendors, how accountability is clearly defined
3. Sampling design: How viewership volume, viewing intensity, audience economic attractiveness and other factors are accommodated
4. Measuring viewing across multiple screens
5. Measuring viewing across individual, family and community settings
6. Familiarity with Ascription, Data Fusion and Data Synthesis in multimedia measurement
   1. Need for fusing consumption data from multiple media
   2. How fused data are being introduced into commercial application
7. Typical relative error levels in measurement systems operating in different geographies.
   1. Levels considered generally acceptable for a robust Peoplemeter system
   2. Sampling designs that will ensure a systematically lower relative error
8. Audit mechanisms typically put in place to ensure reportability of data
9. Keeping Panels representative of a fast changing Universe while allowing for continuity of data reads without trend breaks