The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has asked the TV viewership monitoring agency, TAM Media Research, to delay the release of TV ratings data after the news channels' request.
TAM, which was supposed to release the data of the past 10 weeks, has sent message to its subscribers that the release of TV ratings would be delayed further, only by "one or two days".
“At the request of the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, Government of India, and in concurrence with Indian Broadcasting Foundation, Advertising Agencies Association of India and Indian Society of Advertisers, we are delaying the data release to Thursday/Friday. The reason for doing so is that the Govt of India has requested us to withhold release of news channels data by two or three days. The industry is meeting with the ministry to take a decision," TAM said.
As the industry bodies - IBF, AAAI and ISA - are yet to meet, it may be a while before the final decision on the date for release of data is announced.
Earlier, News Broadcasters Association (NBA) had written to TAM suggesting that news channels' viewership data should be delayed till the second phase of digitisation, i.e. March 31, 2013.
