The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) celebrates five years of operations today (April 29, 2020).

Many of us know the circumstances in which BARC was envisaged and established, and given that audience measurement doesn’t come cheap, it was indeed wise to have a joint industry body doing the exercise.

With BARB from the United Kingdom as inspiration, BARC was incorporated in 2010. Operations though took off only after some five years and the first set of data was published on April 29, 2015. In the very year of launch, it also announced rural audience measurement and now measures 185,000 individuals over 44,000 homes, and that number is set to grow to 55,000. Well it was scheduled to, if Covid-19 hadn’t happened.

Viewership, as measured by BARC, grew 38% till 2019 and a total of 48.4 trillion viewing minutes were consumed in 2019 alone. BARC currently measures 634 channels. The future is bright given that 100 million homes still to get a TV set.

It’s unfortunate that the celebrations are dampened by an ill-placed recommendations from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)

Sunil Lulla, a veteran mediaperson who has worked across the M&E spectrum, took charge at BARC in October 2019. With broadcast – entertainment, news, with advertising and with a large production house. He has also spent some quality with a large digital venture. He spoke with Pradyuman Maheshwari, Editor-in-Chief, MxMIndia on a wide range of issues. Check out the video. It’s nearly 30 minutes. So pull out the popcorn or whatever. And enjoy.