New Delhi, Mar 27: The government on Friday released the TV Ratings Policy 2026, which sets out comprehensive guidelines for regulating television ratings in the country with the aim of ensuring transparency, independence and accountability in audience measurement.
The policy defines clear standards for the registration, operation, audit, and oversight of agencies providing TV rating services, an official statement said.
The TV Rating Policy 2026 replaces the existing guidelines for TV rating agencies in India issued on January 16, 2014. It is available on the website of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB).
Key highlights of the policy include ensuring ease in entry norms and reduction of the net worth requirement for a company willing to register as a TV rating agency from the existing Rs 20 crore to Rs 5 crore.
Strict anti-conflict measures include ensuring neutrality and the policy providing that at least 50 per cent of the board of directors must be independent directors with no ties to broadcasters, advertisers or advertising agencies.
Additionally, agencies have been prohibited from engaging in consultancy roles that could create conflicts of interest.
For enhanced sample size and representative data, agencies must scale up their operations to 80,000 metered homes within 18 months (six months for existing rating agencies), eventually reaching 1,20,000 homes to improve data accuracy.
Measurement must be technology-neutral, capturing data across Cable, DTH, OTT, and connected TVs and the data shall be captured from all the TV viewing screens of the metered homes.
For transparency and privacy, agencies are required to publish their detailed methodology and anonymised data on their websites. Furthermore, all operations must strictly comply with the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 to safeguard viewer privacy.
To ensure accountability and audits, a dual-audit system has now been made mandatory, featuring quarterly internal audits and annual independent external audits. The I&B ministry will also constitute an audit and oversight team for periodic field inspections.
For grievance redressal, agencies must appoint a nodal officer to resolve complaints within 10 days and establish an appellate authority for escalated disputes.
Under landing page exclusions and disclosure requirements, any viewership arising out of a landing page is not to be counted in the viewership measurement. However, a landing page can be used only as a marketing tool. The broadcasters shall disclose the availability of their channel on the landing page, if any, to the rating agency.
Regarding compliance and penalties, the policy says non-compliance will attract graded penalties, ranging from temporary suspensions of ratings to the cancellation of registration for repeat violations.
On platforms allowed to publish viewership data, it says TV distribution platforms or OTT platforms may publish periodic viewership data of broadcasters or channels being played on their platforms or on their websites without obtaining registration or permission under these guidelines.
Through these measures, the government of India reaffirms its commitment to a fair, competitive and well-governed broadcasting environment that safeguards the stakeholders and public interest, the statement said.
