Sometime late in 2002,in an industry seminar,Lynn De Souza,then a group director in media buying house Lintas Media Group,made a forceful case against the then prevalent television viewership measurement system in the country. Ten years later,when De Souza is chairman and CEO of Lintas,nothing has changed in the system. The company that measured viewership then,Mumbai-based TAM Media Research Pvt Ltd,is the same. The logistics,the methodology and the way it ran its business,too,are fundamentally the same. So are those directly affected by TAMs output broadcasters,media buyers and marketers. And,like De Souzas,a section of the industrys gripe with TAM and its measurement process remains much the same. It is correct that for the past many years we have consistently been asking that the number of peoplemeters be increased to a level that reflects the correct TV viewing preferences of viewers, she says. We have asked that the process of viewership measurement be made more transparent and robust but to no avail. The peoplemeter is an electronic device used to track how and what Indians watch on TV. For close to 150 million TV households in India,the number of peoplemeters is 8,160. This wide gap is perceived to have created imbalances in the way viewing trends are deciphered,popularity charts are drawn and TV advertising budgets (Rs 12,000 crore in 2011) are decided for more than 600 channels currently on air in the country. The industry has been besieged with complaints against TAM. The broadcast landscape has completely changed in the past two decades,yet we continue to be guided by a small,corruptible process, says Sunil Lulla,CEO,Times Television Network that includes Times Now and ET Now. There have also been rampant allegations about breach in the confidentiality of households where peoplemeters are installed; bribing of viewers into watching some channels; and tampering of peoplemeters by cable operators and TAMs own field staff. In this context,there are no new allegations in the close to $2 billion lawsuit filed in New York on July 26 by news broadcaster NDTV against TAMs global parents The Nielsen headquartered in the US and Kantar Media Research owned by London-based WPP Plc,the worlds largest marketing communications network. NDTV has only put on record,presumably with evidence,what had been alleged and debated within the industry for more than a decade. Its petition says it had been communicating with TAM since 2004 about aberrations in its measurement methodology and that in the past year or so,the broadcaster gave TAM evidence of fiddling of peoplemeters by its own field staff. NDTV has claimed TAMs own executives found evidence on the way the measurement process was compromised. TAM has been doing viewership measurement surveys since 2000. It installs peoplemeters in randomly chosen TV households in urban and semi-urban areas. The data is then analysed and extrapolated for the entire viewership universe and expressed in television rating points. These TRPs denote the percentage of audiences that tune in to a certain channel to watch a certain programme. High TRPs give broadcasters the muscle to negotiate advertising rates on their terms; low TRPs leave them at advertisers mercy. Advertising being the primary source of sustenance for broadcasters in India,TRPs become a crucial factor for their survival. It is the TRPs that have been blamed for a deterioration in the quality of TV content; it is believed that to boost their TRPs,broadcasters veer towards sensationalism. No objection The allegations of a broken model,inadequacies,opaqueness and corruption in TAMs operations notwithstanding,the question that begs an answer is: why did an industry,with power to reach out to and influence every section of the country,allow itself to suffer at the hands of an entity that,interestingly,depended on the industry itself for survival (TAMs primary source of income is the fee it gets from broadcasters and advertisers for its data)? Even as a section of the industry is up in arms against TAM,there are many who admit it is the industrys own callousness that allowed things to come to such a pass. All that the industry needed to do to rein in TAMs alleged waywardness was to pass a resolution saying it will not buy its data unless it addresses their concerns, says Jawahar Goel,managing director of DTH company Dish TV India Ltd and a founding member of Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF),an industry body of broadcasters. The truth is,he says,there are too many parties with conflicting interests in the game. There are ad agencies,broadcasters,advertisers,Doordarshan,the I&B Ministry,and DAVP (Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity). They all have different priorities. Each of them wanted a system that suited their interests without making efforts to strengthen what was already there, he says. Atul Phadnis,an industry veteran who has been in and outside TAM and is today CEO,WhatsonIndia,an online channel guide,says it is surprising that two of the countrys top TV networks (Star India and Zee Group) joined hands to address the issue of under-declaration of TV households by cable operators but there has been no similar initiative in wresting better control on ratings. If only a handful of broadcasters got together,there would be no scope for TAMs alleged excesses, he says. A former CEO of a leading news broadcast company points out that TAM,essentially,was born out of the joint efforts of IBF,the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI,a body of advertising and media buying agencies),and the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA). In the early 1990s,when cable and satellite TV was taking root and diverse channels were populating a market so far served only by Doordarshan,advertisers and broadcasters needed a tool to exploit the evolving phenomenon. The industry needed a common currency that could be used to buy and sell commercial airtime. Thus TAM and its TRPs were born, he says. Monopoly TAM has been the sole agency conducting the research except for a short while when another,Amap,was floated in 2004 as an alternative but the latter soon wound up as not many bought its data. TAM has often been targeted for being a monopoly. The industry has been divided over whether there should be more than one ratings agency. De Souza,a vociferous opponent of TAM,argues a single currency is preferable as it streamlines negotiation. There should ideally be only one currency of transaction when there is only one set of buyers and sellers involved, she says. Being the only provider of data has presented TAM its own challenges. For instance,it is an open secret that broadcasters have tried to influence it to get data that projected them in good light. Even the NDTV petition says one of its rivals was involved in the fiddling of the peoplemeters along with TAMs field staff. There have also been allegations of politicians owning channels putting pressure on TAM to reflect viewership in their favour. TAM refused to speak because the issue is sub judice. The government threatened several times in the past to step in and clear the mess but its efforts were thwarted by the industry. In 2008,there was an uproar against a sting operation which around that time had emerged a popular tool among news channels to boost TRPs in which a reporter of Hindi channel Live India falsely implicated a teacher for running a sex racket in her school. The incident was raised in Parliament and then I&B minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi announced the government would set up its own audience measurement system. An alarmed industry disassociated itself from TAM by dissolving a joint industry body guiding and supervising TAM,and announced setting up of Broadcast Audience Research Council. BARC remains a non-starter four years on. Uday Shankar,CEO of Star India,the largest broadcast network in the country,says it is AAAI and ISA that have held BARC back. For advertisers,the only efficacy of the viewership data is to put a transactional value to it,whereas we broadcasters feel the data should reflect a larger view of Indian audiences preferences, he says. A senior member of AAAI,on the other hand,says IBFs high-handedness held things from moving forward. Broadcasters want to keep the research process under their thumb. That is unfair because that will make them the master of the currency we will all be forced to transact in, he says. The NDTV lawsuit has made the industry sit up and speak of resolving the standoff. It is clear that we need to hasten the process of getting BARC on its feet, says Arvind Sharma,president,chairman and CEO of advertising network Leo Burnett and also the current president of AAAI. BARC has been incorporated but an insider reveals that even it has engaged The Nielsen to conduct the establishment survey (essentially,the groundwork before setting up the system in place). The irony of the debate couldnt be starker. SWITCHING CHANNELS WHO WHAT,WHEN TAM Media Research Pvt Ltd,an equal joint venture between global reseach firms The Nielsen and Kantar Media Research,has since 2000 been putting a figure to what Indians like to watch 600 TV channels currently on air in the country WHY High TRPs give broadcasters the muscle to negotiate high advertising rates for themselves; low TRPs leave them at advertisers mercy. Indian broadcasters survive on advertising $ 2 bn Size of NDTVs suit over way tam conducts measurements ndtv alleges aberrations in TAM methodology; fiddling of peoplemeters by TAM field staff HOW 8,160 Number of peoplemeters used by TAM. A peoplemeter is an electronic device that records what people watch on channels and for how long. The 8,160 peoplemeters are installed in randomly chosen TV households in urban and semi-urban areas 150 mn TV households in India. Whatever is measured by the peoplemeters is extrapolated for this entire population and expressed in TRPs,or television rating points,a measure of the percentage of TV audiences that tune in to watch a certain programme Find another system,govt advised New Delhi: An expert group to suggest innovations in the media sector has told the government an alternative ratings system needs to be developed for a more accurate measurement of TV viewing and radio listening patterns. The Sectoral Innovation Council for the I&B Ministry has suggested that the government collaborate with the media industry to evolve an alternative to TAM. The council is part of the National Innovation Council,under Sam Pitroda,to suggest innovations in different sectors. The sectoral council on media last week submitted its report to the I&B Minister. BEYOND RATINGS Other recommendations media education: Government should regulate media education to ensure orderly growth of discipline as part of higher education. Like medical education and technical education,media education be regulated by a new organisation ,Education Council,to be part of I&B (Ministry). The regulator: The Media Education Council should be assigned the task of setting up curriculum for all levels so that standardised curriculum with national accreditation becomes a possibility. There is need to make IIMC,FTII and SRFTI (Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute) into real centres of excellence. These institutions could either be separate universities or become part of one central university. ENS
