It took nearly a decade of talking, three years of operational groundwork and even a rare Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recommendation that government actually agreed with. Yet the rollout of Indian television’s new rating system over the last month could not overcome the curse of the sarkari file. The first set of new ratings came out on April 29 and triumphalist news channels were still tom-tomming their renewed dominance – whether the nation wanted to know or not – when just in its second week of operational data-reporting, the new agency, Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), was served notice to desist by the ministry of information and broadcasting till its registration formalities were cleared.

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