English channels to opt out of BARC audience research from this week

Bengaluru: As expected, Republic TV has once again hit headlines for wrong reason. This time, the youngest news channel stirred controversy over spat with rival news channels with regard to unfair trade practices and the impact was such that all the English news channels have withdrawn from the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), the weekly

All started on Wednesday with News Broadcasters Association (NBA) writing to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) alleging that newly launched Republic TV is engaged in unfair trade practice and unethical distribution tactics to secure no 1 position in the TRP.

The NBA has alleged that Republic TV is violating the TRAI’s broadcasting rules by registering multiple times under different genres on cable platforms. The NAB also requested the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) not to release its weekly data on Thursday as TRP issue of English news channels is with TRAI.

But on Thursday, the BARC went ahead with the TRP announcement for theweek between Saturday, May 6 to Friday, May 12. As per the BARC, the TRP data weekly impression of Republic TV stood at 2117000 in the first week itself and become no 1 English news channel while Times Now is in distant second with a weekly impression of 1148000.

Following the TRP data release even after their letters, now the NBA has decided to pull off their channels from the BARC platform. This means, none of the English news channels will be part of the BARC audience research starting from this week.