ITV INDUSTRY BATTING FOR EXPANDED RATING SYSTEM MEANS POST TRP SCAM -
BARC declined to comment on Mint’s queries on whether it would be open to other measurement metrics or is working on making its own system robust. (😂)
“The industry should make sure the methodology is foolproof for which TV sets should be supplied with RPD-enabled set-top boxes," said Avinash Pandey, CEO, ABP Network adding that while such boxes have been installed in some homes across the country, more intervention is required from private players including, distribution operators. “The current methodology not just leads to errors in extrapolation but also ends up curbing creators and broadcasters from coming up with meaningful content, most of which they are made to believe will not attract enough eyeballs," he added.
To be sure, some are already stepping up. DTH players like Tata Sky are themselves making proposals to share data on viewership that they have been collecting for years with the industry.
“The most accurate form of viewership data, albeit at the family and not at the individual level, is what is obtained as return path data (RPD). However, this requires creation of access and collection facilities by the distribution platform, cable or DTH. Tata Sky has enabled this and we’ll be happy to provide this, at an aggregated level, to an accredited ratings agency, if it can be of help to the media industry," Harit Nagpal, managing director and CEO, Tata Sky said. The company that has had a viewership system in place since 2013 currently measures data from around 32,000 set-top boxes that are enabled with RPD technology.
Karan Taurani, research analyst at Elara Capital Ltd said BARC ratings will continue to be used as viewership currency, though their significance may be slightly diluted in favour of other factors that brands and broadcasters have anyway always considered for making decisions, such as target audience or big celebrity events happening on a channel.
Speaking to Mint earlier, Uday Shankar, the former chairman of Star and Disney India, said that sample-based ratings provided by a monopolistic third party are too outdated today and there will always be a risk of manipulation and corruption. “The best outcome is to move to the full measurement of the universe, create competition among ratings providers," he had said.
Agreed former Colors CEO and ad sales veteran Raj Nayak adding that India had two ratings agencies for a short time and one of them offered overnight ratings of TV programmes. Competition will help make data more robust, he added.
Rahul Sood, managing director, India and South Asia, BBC Global News that operates BBC News and BBC World News added the small sample size of the English news genre in a large and heterogenous market like India—about 150 homes out of the 45,000 that BARC reaches, makes it easy to manipulate. However, things should get better in the emerging digital universe where viewership measurement will require little human intervention.
“A lot of this will wither away with the use of IPTVs, connected and smart TVs that will come with hybrid boxes that minimise the scope of manipulation. There is enough demand and pressure for all of this now," Sood said.
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