I&B Ministry
Ratings, but no raters: India’s new TV measurement regime has drawn a blank
Delhi has slashed the entry fee and rolled out the welcome mat for challengers, yet not one agency incumbent BARC included has signed up under the Television Ratings Policy 2026
NEW DELHI: India has torn up the rulebook on how it counts television eyeballs. The snag? Not one company has bothered to pick up a pen and register to do the counting not even BARC, the lone scorekeeper Indian telly has leaned on for more than a decade.
That awkward silence rang out in the Rajya Sabha on 24 July, when minister of state for information and broadcasting L Murugan fielded a pointed question from MP John Brittas on the fate of the country’s TV ratings. In black and white, the minister delivered the punchline himself: as on date, no entity is registered under the new policy. The ministry of information and broadcasting has built a gleaming new house for television measurement — and, so far, nobody has moved in.
The Television Ratings Policy 2026, which replaced creaking guidelines dating back to January 2014, was meant to be the great liberaliser of the ratings trade. It flings the doors wide open to competition, the policy, Murugan stressed, places no cap whatsoever on the number of agencies that can set up shop and it lowers the drawbridge for newcomers, slashing the net-worth bar from a hefty Rs 20 crore to a far friendlier Rs 5 crore.
There is plenty more sugar in the deal. The metered-home panel gets a muscular bump from 50,000 to 80,000 households. Measurement finally goes technology-neutral, chasing viewers onto connected TVs and channels streaming on OTT platforms. Establishment surveys will run every three years, landing pages are booted out of the viewership maths, a long-standing industry bugbear audits turn annual, and a graded penalty framework stands ready to rap any misbehaving knuckles.
To keep the number-crunchers honest, the policy piles on safeguards: cross-holding curbs, a minimum 33 per cent independent directors on the board, a ban on the sort of consultancy work that muddies the waters, security clearances, and a thick stack of audit and transparency obligations.
Generous terms, then. And still, an audience of none.
Brittas had in fact asked something sharper whether the government had ordered BARC to freeze ratings across all genres until it registered under the new regime, and, if so, when the numbers might start flowing again. On that, the reply was a masterclass in the art of not quite answering: it neither confirmed nor denied any freeze, gliding smoothly instead into a guided tour of the policy’s finer points.
Which leaves the trade squinting at a test card. The rules are written, the barriers are lower, the rivals are welcome but until someone, anyone, actually signs on the dotted line, India’s broadcasters and advertisers are trading the nation’s airtime on ratings whose footing has suddenly gone wobbly.
The government has built the studio, dimmed the lights and cued the music. Now it just needs someone to walk on set.
