IndiaThe MIB and the TV rating agency puzzle

India could head for a short television ratings dark period if the guidelines approved by the Cabinet move into quick implementation. The sole rating agency, TAM Media Research, will find it impossible to restructure its shareholding structure within 30 days and there is also the challenging task of adding the panel size to a minimum of 20,000 within six months of the guidelines coming into force.

Broadcasters Audience research Council (BARC), the industry-backed audience measurement body, will have to move at a quick pace. BARC chairman and Zee Entertainment Enterprises MD & CEO Punit Goenka had told TelevisionPost.com that BARC would roll out by the second quarter of the calendar year.

The industry expects the government to give grace time or delay the notification till such time that the grey areas get sorted out. “The government will find a way out. A complete absence of ratings data for a longer period is not what anybody would want. Even pubcaster Doordarshan would be impacted,” says the head of a television broadcasting company.

The Information and Broadcasting Ministry and the BARC board members will be meeting on 16 January. The outcome of that will be closely watched even as nobody knows what course of action TAM would take.

Even as the industry is debating how TAM will comply with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) recommendations on television rating agencies, Information & Broadcasting (I&B) minister Manish Tewari has set the cat among the pigeons by revealing that there is no foreign direct investment (FDI) permitted in the television rating agencies as on date.http://www.televisionpost.com/television/the-mib-and-the-tv-rating-agency-puzzle/