BARC Names Tech Advisor as it Prepares for Launch

In India, broadcast audience measurement body BARC has appointed Dr Sumit Chowdhury as Technical Advisor, as it prepares for the launch its new audience measurement system next month.

BARC (the Broadcast Audience Research Council) is backed by the Indian Broadcasting Foundation, the Advertising Agencies Association of India, and the Indian Society of Advertisers, and was formed to oversee and control the television audience measurement system in India. It was set up after some broadcasters complained of inaccuracies and anomalies in data provided by India's only audience measurement agency, TAM Media Research, a joint venture between Nielsen and Kantar Media.

Chowdhury (pictured) is the founder of Gaia Smart Cities, which focuses on telecoms and ICT solutions for smart cities. Until recently, he was President of telecom-enabled service provider Reliance Jio, where he initially served as CIO, and then established the firm's enterprise business. Prior to this, he was VP of IBM, CIO of Reliance Communications, and a Partner at KPMG.

At BARC, Chowdhury is tasked with measuring and automating all processes and infrastructure relating to the launch of the new system. This captures data about TV content consumed through any form of distribution - terrestrial, DTH, analog cable, digital cable and digital - and it will now include rural households, while TAM focuses on urban households. BARC claims a number of broadcasters and ad agencies have now signed up for the new system and have not renewed their contracts with TAM.

Partho Dasgupta, BARC India CEO, comments: 'As we are gearing up for launch, Sumit's excellent background and experience in telecom, media entertainment and other industries will ensure all systems scale and are in sync and automated for the big data factory that we will be running.'

Web site: www.barcindia.co.in .