Audit report may sound death knell for idea of BARC

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Editor's note: We’re taking the day off and not publishing one of our daily stories on account of Republic Day. But we do have an important and timely follow-up to our BARC story. Last week was probably the worst in the five-year existence of television ratings agency Broadcast Audience Research Council. A report in The Economic Times finally laid bare an important piece of evidence in the television rating points, or TRP, scam—a forensic audit commissioned by BARC in 2020 and conducted by Acquisory Risk Consultancy, which had been referred to on multiple occasions by the Mumbai Police over the past few months but hadn’t been disclosed yet. A reading of the audit report, a copy of which has been reviewed by The Morning Context, suggests something that BARC has explicitly denied in the past—manual intervention in the ratings data. The forensic audit says viewership ratings were changed on several occasions, and delves into specific instances of wrongdoing—interference with data in the English and Telugu news genres, misuse of company funds, and unexplained incentive plans for select employees. Evidence indicated favouritism shown …