BARC India CEO Sunil Lulla quits

After almost two years as CEO at Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, Sunil Lulla has quit, highly placed sources have confirmed. This (August) will be Lulla’s last month with the television ratings agency.

Lulla replaced Partho Dasgupta as the CEO in October 2019. Dasgupta was arrested by the Mumbai Police in December 2020 in the alleged television rating points (TRP) scam case.

In a career spanning over 30 years, Lulla has worked with multiple media channels, including MTV India, Sony Entertainment Television (SET) and Times Television Network. He has also worked for entertainment platforms, like HMV/Sa Re Ga Ma and Balaji Telefilms. He’s also the founder and chief evangelist at The Linus Adventures, a consulting service.

It was during his tenure that BARC suspended its weekly ratings of TV news channels for three months in October 2020, amid the controversy surrounding its viewership data for TV news channels. The industry regulator has been embroiled in a controversy since October 2020, when the alleged TRP manipulation scam came up.

Mumbai Police named Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV and two other Marathi channels for paying certain households to keep their television sets on to increase the viewership of their channels. As part of the investigations, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had summoned Lulla as well for questioning in late February.

Despite repeated attempts to reach out to him, Lulla remains unavailable for comments on his next move.