The much-maligned TRP, or television ratings point, system took another blow last week when Information & Broadcasting Minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi claimed that he had been threatened five times over attempts to “set right” the “irregularities” in determining the ratings. In a nation of 100 crore, he asked, how could 6,000 households be taken as a sample? The minister also said that TRAI had been asked to give recommendations for formulating policy guidelines regarding Television Audience Measurement (TAM)/TRP to widen the sample size and bring greater transparency. It’s not the first time that the TRP system has been questioned, but for want of another methodology, TV channels say they have little else to go by:•What are TRPs?TRPs, or television rating points, are the criteria that indicate the popularity of a TV channel or programme. Television ratings provide information about the viewers’ TV watching habits and the socio-economic background of the audience. Advertisers and corporate media planners use the information to select the media, channel and programme to sell their products, and at the right time. •Who calculates TRPs?Currently, INTAM (Indian Television Audience Measurement), also called TAM, is the accepted electronic rating agency. aMAP (Audience Map, or Audience Measurement and Analytics) is another supplier. Claiming to be Asia’s first overnight audience ratings service, it uses a more discreet system, and gives data every day. •How do they work?TAM uses two methods for calculating TRPs. First is frequency monitoring, in which ‘people meters’ are installed in sample homes. These electronic gadgets continuously record data about the channel watched by the members of the sample family. It reads the frequencies of channels, which are later decoded into the names of the channels. The agency prepares a national data on the basis of its sample home readings. The second technique is more reliable and relatively new to India. This is called the picture matching technique wherein the people meters continuously record a small portion of the picture that is being watched on the television set. Along with this, the agency also records data of all the channels in the form of small picture portions. Data collected from the sample homes is later matched with the main data bank to interpret the channel name. This way, a national rating is produced.aMap’s central servers collect TV viewership data every morning between 2 am and 4 am (for the previous day) by making a cellular telephone call to meters installed in sample homes. These reports are then immediately available online to subscribers. aMap has 46 television channels subscribing to its viewership data. The television viewership profile includes demographic details, durable product ownership, occupation status and other parameters. •Are there any shortcomings in the sampling techniques? While TAM data works for general entertainment channels, because of the small size of the sample it has greater problems for niche channels or more focused ones. The total sample is about 7,000-8,000 boxes. for general elections they do more than one lakh people and still have problems. Some areas are not even covered (Bihar and Northeast for example, as the I&B Minister pointed out). In others, the reading can be skewed when a single viewer on a meter watches too much of channel but that does not really reflect the market.Besides, the people meter technique itself suffers from a drawback. Cable operators frequently change the frequencies of the channels before sending signals to homes. It can be very misleading to read a channel according to a particular frequency, even if the downlinking frequency is the same all over India. aMap claims to have corrected this by having its central server dial into each meter to collect data for automated processing and data health checks. Around 5 per cent of the households are also randomly crosschecked for reliability of the data. •How dependable are TRPs?The TRPs are claims made by the channels and not by TAM. TAM releases its data to TV channels collected after exhaustive research. This data can be used in various ways by the channels, which also implies that it can be manipulated to suit their needs. Higher TRPs translate into higher advertising revenues for channels, hence there is cut-throat competition among private TV channels to project high popularity ratings for themselves. Their claims are debatable. •Who benefits from TRP-related data?Three entities: TV channels, which explore their ranking with the data; media planning agencies, which use them to market the popularity of TV channels and influence advertisers’ choice for putting their money on channels; and clients, i.e. advertisers, who use the ratings to choose their publicity vehicle. •Do TRPs affect ad revenues?Definitely. With the ongoing IPL matches, Sony TV has commanded very high ad revenues. Conversely, when India made an exit out of the 2007 Cricket World Cup, TRPs of Sony TV fell, hence making them lose ad revenue that had been calculated on the basis of potential viewership with India playing.
