TRP is nothing but Television Rating Point. This is nothing but calculating or checking popularity of particular channel compare to others. We usually see different channels, but sometimes we prefer to see 2-3 serials, show regularly on one of the channel. So someone else may be liking other show on other channel. So calculating viewers point, How many people are watching same channel at a time is nothing but TRP. For calculation they choose few say 100 amongst people and calculate it. Please see below links for more deatil.
TRP is calculated by conducting a test on small area.
Some meters are installed in small are at sample homes and these meters continuously record data about the channel or programme watched by that area's Television.
TRP is criteria that indicates the popularity of a channel or programme that is useful for advertisers.
But Doordarshan is using its own ratings system DART (Doordarshan Audience Ratings). In DART system a diary is distributed to sample houses to get the ratings. Than viewers are asked to write name of each and every programme whenever watched by these guys.Every week these dairies are collects by Doordarshan and these dairies are send back to head office for compilation and based on that polpularity of programme is declared and TRP is calculated.
But critics doubt these system of calculating TRP and DART as these are just conducted on small area generally rural area. And a small area can not confirm the taste and popularity of a programm in whole india.
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.
Twitter activity can increase a show's TRP: Study
Television rating points of a TV show and the Twitter activity related to that show are closely related, according to a new study by Nielsen, a global information and measurement company.
It has found that the more popular a show, the more people tweet about it. Also, the more the tweets about a show, the more people are induced to watching that show.
The study, according to the company website "is the first...(one) to quantify the extent to which higher levels of tweeting may cause additional viewers to tune in to programming."
"Using time series analysis, we saw a statistically significant causal influence indicating that a spike in TV ratings can increase the volume of tweets, and, conversely, a spike in tweets can increase tune-in," said Paul Donato, Nielsen's chief research officer.
The study included "221 broadcast prime time programme episodes" and found that "live TV ratings had a meaningful impact in related tweets among 48 percent of the episodes sampled."
The volume of tweets also caused changes in TV ratings among 29% of the episodes.
The impact of tweets varied across genres: 37% for comedy, 28% for sports and 18% for drama.
The study used the time series methodology developed by Nobel-prize winning economist Clive Granger.
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