BARC India plans to grow rural sample size by 153% by end of FY19

Recently, Partho Dasgupta, CEO, Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) spoke to PTI revealing ambitious plans to increase the sample size for TV viewership in rural markets by the end of FY2019. Dasgupta told PTI that the percentage of metered homes in the rural television market will grow from 33 per cent to 38 per cent, with the number of metered homes increasing to 44,000 from 33,000. 

A previous report by BARC in 2015, indicated that regardless of the advent of digital, television engagement amongst youth continues to be highest ever. The organisation intends to supplement their expansion plans with Return Path Data to scale up even more and reach up to 200,000 homes in the coming years.

BARC, which rolls out viewership statistics on a weekly basis, will be able to show more current data sets and accurate measurements. It can also avoid panel tampering an issue that is rampant in rural markets. Dasgupta remarked that “trends like the increase in temperature leads to drop in primetime viewership and total viewership in South spikes during festival season” could offer to key insight for Networks.