India, April 3 -- Last week, the information and broadcasting ministry notified the Television Rating Policy 2026, replacing the outdated 2014 guidelines, to an underwhelming response from the media and entertainment (M&E) industry. Though the new policy is aimed at modernizing and expanding audience measurement to include linear and connected TVs in a household, it achieves too little too late for India's complex and rapidly changing media landscape. For starters, the policy allows multiple TV ratings agencies to set up shop in India by lowering the entry barrier, with the minimum net worth required for a rating agency reduced from Rs.20 crore to Rs.5 crore. It's seen as an attempt by the government to make it easier for new players to enter and break the monopoly of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, the joint industry body, that measures TV viewership. All rating agencies, including BARC, will have to register themselves with the government, keep 50% independent directors on their boards, and get security clearance for their key executives from the ministry of home affairs. Besides, OTT streaming platforms, and the Distribution Platform Operators (DPOs) such as large cable networks as well as DTH platforms, are now allowed to publish their own viewership data. Unlike rating agencies, these platforms need not register. This exemption distorts the level playing field, broadcasters argue. "DPOs and DTH players can release data immediately without processing or auditing it which is required for a rating agency. It could influence marketing deals, undermining the official industry currency," said a broadcast sector executive. Security clearances and running to the ministry for permission each time there's a change in the board is also cumbersome. Under the new rules, BARC must scale its metered panel homes to 80,000 (from 50,000) in six months. A new agency gets 18 months for this with a long-term goal of 120,000 homes. "A 10% buffer of metered homes is required for random sampling, which will push the total requirement to 132,000 homes. This will be a financial burden for BARC India," said the TV sector executive. Adding meters will escalate the cost of doing business, said market research expert Amit Adarkar. "Besides, today there are newer, app-based technologies for audience measurement," said Adarkar, the CEO of i-Genie.ai, a global consumer intelligence platform. TAM Media Research CEO, LV Krishnan, added that there are other ways to scale the sample size. "The IPTV or hybrid boxes in people's homes can pipe both linear TV and connected TV data. So, these homes need not have meters for audience measurement," he said. Globally, media measurement is expensive and it's best to invest in a single good system. Besides, it's a currency on which advertising money is traded. "Logically, one market should have one currency," Adarkar said. It's unclear if the policy is pushing for measuring out-of-home media consumption too or will consider data from closed digital ecosystems like Google or Meta. If their user data remains in walled gardens, no audience measurement can be truly representative, Adarkar added. TAM's Krishnan, however, said that advertisers' immediate concern is with a unified linear and CTV data. "Social will come into play eventually," he said. So, will TAM re-enter the TV ratings business? "We have always been in audience measurement. For years TAM has been capturing viewership for DTH and cable platforms which they use for understanding audiences," Krishnan said. With these platforms being allowed to publish data, TAM is hoping to expand its footprint. "Quality and trust - which comes with third party measurement - will decide the usability of this data for advertisers," Krishnan said. Nielsen, a global audience measurement and analytics company, said new TV rating guidelines seem to be a step in the right direction with focus on expanding sample size and enabling cross-platform measurement across connected TV, and linear television. It should enhance its robustness, lead to better representation of smaller, regional players, niche audiences and enable more data granularity. "Though its implementation could be challenging - the intent shows a move toward a more unified and realistic view of audiences," the company said. Asked if Nielsen would enter the TV ratings business, it said that the company already has a digital campaign measurement solution along with digital content and behaviour measurement and would want to focus on enhancing it further....