MUMBAI: Television viewership measurement body Broadcasters Audience Research Council (BARC) has intimated stakeholders that it has reverted to the earlier process of treatment of landing page, in response to a recent Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) ruling. BARC India has also started filtering out outliers from the landing page.

“Please note that as per representations received from various stakeholders and as per our board mandate, we are in the interim reverting to our earlier process for treatment of landing page. The same will be reflective from week 23 onwards till further notice. The process is also under review by the board,” BARC said while releasing the week 23 data.

As per the argument of BARC India, since it cannot identify landing pages, it has been identifying reach outliers. While this practice of identifying reach outliers is followed for all channels, the impact is more pronounced for smaller viewership channels like English news and business news.

Recently, TDSAT had set aside TRAI’s direction landing page direction which restricted all the broadcasters and distributors of television channels from placing any registered satellite television channel (whose TV rating was measured by BARC India) on the landing LCN or landing channel or boot up screen.