Television Audience Measurement (TAM), the collaboration of Nielsen Media and Kantar Media, the leading private agency for measuring television viewership across the globe including India has irked over government’s move to intervene in this area as the Information and Broadcasting ministry has directed TRAI to make some guidelines for taming TRP system.
TAM media research on Thursday sends its objection to government, “TAM does not see any role for the government to intervene in any form into this industry exercise, nor does it foresee any requirement of any form of governmental regulation to oversee a TV ratings agency.”
Reiterating over TAM’s capability, it adds that the industry bodies were well capable and had been performing a professional task of TV rating service proficiently.
On the other hand, the government is in qualm about the methodology used for TRP agencies for measuring the TV rating and believes that the TRP rating agencies may use some sort of manipulation in TRP rating that can influence some television programmes and this can dim the transparency of the system.
In this regard, besides TAM some other broadcasters including Indian Society of Advertisers, Broadcast Audience Research Council and the Advertising Agencies Association of India have also sent their objection by stating, “With multitude of channels (and hence inventories) and multiplicity of buyers there is no case for any government intervention in the tools by which prices are determined in this market”.
But Telecom Regulatory Authority of India TRAI on the other hand has denied the issue of government’s move to regulate the market. Nripendra Misra, the chairperson of TRAI responded, “There is no attempt to regulate the sector, but the attempt is to assess, first of all, how transparent the present rating system is: whether it is addressable and whether it is doing justice to such a mammoth country with all its diversities.”
For removing any sort of doubts, Indian broadcasters are willing to ask the global bids for determining TRPs. Under Broadcast Audience Research Council, BARC (a body in the evolving form and was formed some years ago in which several broadcasting agencies would come under it including Indian Broadcasters Federation (IBF), the Indian Society of Advertisers and the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI)), they are willing to conduct a fair taming system that would satisfy to every one.
At present, TAM and eMAP are two individual private agencies in India that measures the television rating and its programmes. TAM uses 7,000 households in cities with more than one lakh population to collect data.
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