Truth in numbers

Advertisers use ratings to allocate spends. These allocations determine,in great measure,the kind of news and entertainment that viewers get. Apart from commercial implications for the TV industry,these decisions have a profound influence on politics and society. Nielsen has been frequently accused of unreliability on reasonable statistical grounds like response bias and compromised sampling. In 2004,News Corporation accused the companys Nielsen Process of underreporting minority viewership,a charge it disproved. Now it faces allegations that amount to criminal manipulation of data.

NDTV has directed multiple allegations at TAM,the Indian wing of Nielsen and Kantar. It accuses them of reneging on a January agreement to raise the sample size from 8,000 to 30,000 which,too,is ridiculously small for a viewership the size of Indias. Worse,it alleges that Nielsen officials took bribes and used freebies to skew ratings,and that this was known to the US primary. The case is sub judice in New York but in India,it should occasion a long-awaited examination of ratings. The industry has been forced to accept Nielsens ratings since it enjoys a monopoly here,but this is an occasion to demand transparency and accountability in the Nielsen Process.