All that you should know about TRPs

What is TRP?

TRP is TV viewership rating points given every Friday to the channels by TV Audience Measurement (TAM) media research. Such points are based on the actual channel viewing by the TV viewers and are recorded through the 5500 PeopleMetre instruments mounted on cable-TV homes across more than 75 cabled-towns in India. That means the instrument is able to digitally record as to which particular channel is being viewed at a particular point of time and for how long in such TV homes. In TRP measurement, content plays the decisive role in defining success, but equally important these days are distribution, marketing, environmental changes (power supply, natural calamities etc.) and viewership fragmentation. In other words, TRP is a function of time spent and reach. While time spent is largely related to content, reach (or eyeballs) is fallout of marketing (on-air and off-air) and distribution.

How does TRP make sense?

TRP forms the main basis of ad spending for the advertisers who are desperate to reach out to their target audience. TRP contributes a great deal to the determination of both advertisement rates and frequency of advertisement orders and considered a necessary evil causing life or death blows for many TV shows. It makes sense to the advertiser community who wants to ensure that the 4860 crore rupees it puts in are well spent.

Who makes TRP work?

A joint industry body (JIB) called Television Audience Measurement (TAM) research makes TRP work. TAM is conducted in 5500 people metered cable homes in more than 75 class I towns (towns with population more than 1,00,000) around the country amidst 84 million TV homes. It costs more than Rs 20 crore presently to deliver annually. Media planning and buying agencies make use of this research to recommend and place advertising time on TV networks.

Having swum the serene let me navigate you through the turbulent parts of the TRP water. First question first:

How sacrosanct and full proof is TRP method?

Sceptics doubt TRP measurement being either sacrosanct or full proof. The big question is, ask skeptics, who pays for this rating service? Internationally, the industry funds the system to the tune of 90 percent. But in India, the giant Rs 12,000-crore industry does not rummage up even 1 percent of its earnings for the well researched service. Major funding comes from media buying agencies.

The second issue raised by the skeptics is whether the sample-spread represent all sections of TV viewers according to income levels? Is it not true that as much as 60 percent of India is left out of TRP coverage? After all, 5500 sampled homes to represent 84 million TV homes are quite inadequate. The sad truth is that the 62 percent of the homes not captured also account for 64 percent of the TV viewing time. This means that that the JIB has funded TAM currently to measure only a third of all the TV viewed in the country.

Here comes the last and the crucial question:

Is the TRP free from bias?

Class and urban bias of the TRP is too obvious to be explained. All these PeopleMetres for measuring viewers are installed in the cable-homes only at present and hence they do not cover the terrestrial TV homes in the country. Nor do they cover the rapidly growing DTH TV homes in the country. These terrestrial TV network cover a vast population of rural and moffusil India, which have no cable connections. These vast portions of India do consume a number of consumer household products. Products like tooth-paste, soap, washing powder, hair-oil, pressure-cooker, motor-cycles, tractors and agricultural appliances, to name a few, reach the remotest parts of India today. Any discerning advertiser does keep this in mind while making its media-plan and while choosing its media wheel to reach out to its consumers. Whether to choose satellite-cables or terrestrial TV network as media-wheel or both depends on the product being high-end or low-end.

Capping it up, you need to understand clearly today that in India, TV ratings are not equal to TV viewership. The surgical solution lies in the bold initiatives of the TV industry itself, both in terms of investment and credibility enhancement. Investment in terms of buying more and more of PeopleMeters commensurate to the growth of TV ownership is the first step. Credibility enhancement exercise involves two measures: one, distribute the installation of these instruments across the states on the basis of number of TV homes rather than on advertisement-churning capacity of pockets of a state. Two, statutorily declare clearly from time to time that the ratings of TAM are of cable-town in selected states of India and that they do not represent viewership of terrestrial or DTH network. Till it does so, the echo of foul play would continue to haunt.