sony trps - Page 2

Television Rating Point (TRP) is a tool provided to judge which programmes are viewed the most. This gives us an index of the choice of the people and also the popularity of a particular channel. For calculation purpose, a device is attached to the TV set in a few thousand viewers' houses for judging purpose. These numbers are treated as sample from the overall TV owners in different geographical and demographic sectors. The device is called as People's Meter. It records the time and the programme that a viewer watches on a particular day. Then, the average is taken for a 30-day period which gives the viewership status for a particular channel.

What is TRP?
TRP means Television Rating Point which indicates the popularity of a TV channel or a program. The points are calculated using questioning of people or using electronic systems. TRP is important as it enables the advertisers and investors to understand the mood of people. According to the TV channel's or TV serial's popularity, advertisers decide where to show their advertisements and investors decide where to invest their money. Many channels like the news channels today use various tactics to increase their viewers and thus their TRP in order to attract advertisers. Sometimes these tactics are offending and harmful for the society.

How is TRP calculated?
TRP is calculated by Indian agencies like INTAM and DART. INTAM stands for Indian Television Audience Measurement. Earlier to INTAM, DART (Doordarshan Audience Research Team) used to calculate these ratings since at that time the only channel available was Doordarshan. DART still exist and is an agency which even takes the TV viewing pattern of rural people into consideration. INTAM and DART use mechanisms like randomly picking up people and questioning them about the various channels and TV programmes or use electronic methods to get the viewership statistics.

Electronic method of TRP calculation:
Following two electronic methods exist for calculating TRP.
1. Frequency Monitoring where a device called "people meters" is installed in a set of selected homes and these gadgets record data about the channel or programme watched by the family members. It reads the frequencies of channels being watched and this data is later analyzed by the agency to create a national TRP data of various TV channels and TV programmes.
2. The second method is called picture matching where the people meter records a small portion of the picture that is being watched on the TV. This data in the form of pictures collected from a set of homes is later on analyzed to calculate the TRPs.