Even if there are alternatives to measuring television viewership, the industry is unprepared to accept, because this is the easiest way to manipulate at the cost of enumerable ambiguities. Still, astonishingly, TRP continues to be a big determiner of a broadcaster’s survival and prospects, writes Dr Sumesh Ramankutty, a well-known media analyst.
January this year there were reports of a massive scandal in the television industry. The Chief Executive Officer of BARC, one of the celebrated positions in the industry, was accused of manipulating the ratings. Yes, we heard it right!
Partho Das Gupta was the first CEO who was onboard to ensure a fair and transparency in television audience measurement. He was appointed to that position when there were many deserving candidates, who had experience and knowledge of research and analytics. Partho bagged the fortune to lead the industry and to tame the wild beasts flocking in the dirty forest of media. BARC and its team anticipated a change.
They were supposed to deliver a solution for all unethical and fraudulent practices in measuring the audience behaviour. As the story wasn’t that bright, history repeated. BARC played a pivotal role in fudging data. It sacrificed ideologies and principles that it was supposed to uphold. As a result, BARC, instead of bringing a revolution in the Indian television audience measurement, became an epicentre of fudging and manipulation. The CEO shamelessly admitted that he was bribed and involved in dirty games, unbecoming of a leader. He should have made history for the entity. But he took the industry for a ride. The advertising fraternity, including the advertisers and broadcasters, were taken for granted. Did the viewers know they were provided with the content that the broadcasters and BARC predetermined to make them watch? The poor quality content was telecast by
doctoring the meters. John Wannamaker’s famous quote holds; “I know that half of my advertising money is wasted…. I just don’t know which half”. The advertising and marketing fraternity need not go searching the “half“. The fudged data
for media planning contains reasons for the loss of the half.
The marketers never asked media agencies nor the media agencies to BARC the reason for it. Who should be penalised for the wastage? Whose money has gone in vain? The industry is silent after the fiasco. Even though the data for the news channels were suspended the marketers believed
there was no trace of manipulation. Marketers, agencies and advertisers continued to invest in media inventory relying on the data.
IBA, IBF, AAI and statutory bodies have not yet risen to the situation. IBA, which uses its power to harass
advertisers, acts only when there is a payment dispute. They are keen to impose an embargo on advertisers. When it comes to their mishaps, they fall asleep. Where are the advertisers now? They should take up the cudgels against the ethical practice of all good-for-nothing bodies. Wake up to stop your money from going into vain.
Naturally, the Mumbai police were excited to probe the scam.
They were concerned about the news genre of Republic TV. The root of the story was traced to somewhere else. The Mumbai police were quick to see injustice after a tip-off by the TRP surge of Republic.
The Palghar killing made the aggressive Republic and Arnab unfriendly with Mumbai Police. The vendetta game opened a can of worms. There were many beneficiaries behind the misdeed. The investigative agency never anticipated a plot that transpired subsequently. That landed the investigators into a dilemma. The one tipped off, the one accused of and the one making noise about it were three slides of a prism. Can we ascertain who is the manipulator?
Such malpractices are two decades old. In those days TAM Media had a monopoly in television viewership measurement. Though INTAM was founded in 1994, it could not make any impact. Later it was merged with TAM, which was founded in 1998. In 2004 another player, a- Map was founded but with no big sample size.
The convergence of TAM and INTAM made the survival of a- Map tougher. In 2010-12 while TAM was losing its market, BARC was shaping up. The committee appointed by the government, industry experts, broadcasters, media agencies and advertisers were waiting for BARC to launch. All waited for months to see it stabilising. Even the Amit Misra committee referred to BARC without explaining what difference that was going to bring in the current methodology and ecosystem.
BARC, “TRANSPARENT”. “ACCURATE”. “INCLUSIVE”. On 7th September 2010 Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) was founded to study television audience measurement. Stakeholders of broadcasters, advertisers and advertising and media agencies jointly founded BARC. According to BARC, it was built on a robust and future-ready technology backbone. With various data dashboards and insights, BARC’s marketing and statistics team were able to capture the interests of the industry. It was gradually perceived as the guardian of television audience measurement. However, every data became reliable only if ethics were maintained. It was tampered with at the source and show-time all these years in the form of pie-charts and graphs using R, python and tableau. With tampered data what difference an agency would be able to bright forth?
TRP is still a mysterious currency in the broadcasting industry. The television audience measurement depends on “the exposure”. This measures the time spent by viewers. The construct determined what the household watched. This is the easiest methodology, which helps determine what the viewer has watched. With easiness comes the flaws of the construct. Even then, it is the only methodology available in the absence of advanced research on an alternate methodology in India. Many research papers from the western world stated the flaws of the methodology. Nevertheless, the industry reserved a strong reluctance in adopting the findings. With blissful ignorance, a fool’s paradise was created. Advertisers, media agencies and marketing stalwarts still believe TRP determines exactly what India sees. They calculate return on media investment in channels.
A scam is no exception to the rating business. It has its style and enough ambiguity. The public is not bothered about the scam that is cancerously spreading in the industry for over four decades. The production houses, more than content production, have mastered the art of doctoring the meters. The Indian households are continuously bombarded with substandard soaps, which become prime-time content, stealing the audience’s right to see quality content. The Sas Bahu style stole the space of deserving contents.
Under the easily manipulative mechanism, big broadcasters and production houses determine what the public must see and what is quality. The biggies in the broadcasting industry and the media houses with money power could be beneficiaries of manipulation. Out of the routine manipulations, big ones hit the banner of scams and the rest evaporates.
Everyone knows those who pay higher are rated higher. Muscle power clogs the voice of whistle-blowers. The consciousness of those who head rating agencies are kept for auction, those with a big bag can take away top rating. Many dual personalities appear in management schools, universities and seminar circuits.
They host candle-light dramas at Mumbai’s landmark India Gate and Marine Drive to shout for justice, transparency and every issue under the sun. They try to grab spotlights of streets. In the early 2000s, these Lutyen inmates were synonymous with integrity. Nationalism was considered a parochial agenda. Foreign exchange used to flow into their nets spontaneously. The level of ethics was more easily ascertainable than TRP. Media is considered the fourth estate. That would reflect people’s voice and mind. It is a weapon to correct wrong systems. It teaches the arrogant ones. It carries citizens’ griefs, happiness and worries. But news broadcasters chose to betray the public mind. They have bought out public freedom. On August 2, 2012, the first scam in the television industry was brought to light. The government received many complaints against TAM Media Research, which was the key entity entrusted to measure TV audience’s behaviour. The controversy began with the discrepancies over IPL viewership data. News channels began disagreeing with TAM on ratings. The protagonist of the story was NDTV.
NDTV filed complaint against the internationally reputed research agencies who collected data on behalf of TAM. Nielsen Co and Kantar Media Research were accused of fudging the data. NDTV alleged bribery to the executives of the research agency. An Economic Times’s report said: “NDTV filed the suit in the New York State Supreme Court seeking damages of around $1.4 billion for negligence and fraud and hundreds of millions more for interference and breach of fiduciary duty”. Neilsen, the first to establish a rating system since the 1950s, played a bigger role. In the US it was the only agency engaged in the measurement of television audience behaviour. Yesterday’s protagonist is today’s antagonist.
While some were busy with rigging the ratings, the protagonist was busy siphoning off money through many shell companies and subsidiaries. That was possible with great leaders in the PSBs who were gratified by media interviews and image building. In turn, NDTV was made eligible for borrowings. With editors’ tricks, due diligence on the window dressed balance sheet is done smoothly.
Journalists know top executives of public sector banks dream plum postretirement placement. Such a dream may be a human tendency. But such a dream is set on taxpayers’ money that goes into sponsorship. Never a credit rating agency has raised the credit rating based on a brand’s participation in an event. Nor has it influenced the stock price. Media men have been aware of the truth.
Cricket and Media are interconnected. Simultaneously from pitch and studio, fiction can be conceived. The IPL scam for the rating was the tip of the iceberg. It was visible that cricket slowly became more adulterated due to the influence of overdose of media and ripples of hypes. Hence cricket became more of entertainment when it moved out of Doordarshan and Prasar Bharati. When the rights were sold to other broadcasters, cricket became a hot daily affair. The rules of the game changed as per the format of the broadcaster. New leagues and formats started entertaining the Indian audience.
Patriotism became a special recipe only when the World Cup came. IPL became an annual meeting of the cricket fraternity all over the world. Until 2014 cricket was the only celebrated event. Slowly kabaddi, badminton and boxing too could draw a space. The graph went high and low. The players, groomed by the media, danced to the scripted tunes.
Many such leagues were curated with short and crisp formats. The graph moved in response to anger, revenge, surprise, tension etc. Investors started betting on TRP and ultimately to buy spots and even teams. Every inventory was sold regardless of what the content was like a temple was built to have an idol according to the interest of the local crowd.
In 2012 serious rating errors were observed. With the huge crowd in the gallery, the ratings of IPL should have gone up. But Sony and Max channels were shocked. Manjit Singh, the CEO, suspected the paradox. Eventually, the property went to Star Sports as it wasn’t so profitable for Sony due to the poor ratings. As the broadcaster was changed the ratings for IPL gone up! Sony was not a paid channel, but Star was. Still, the rating was high.
NDTV, in its 194 pages lawsuit, mentioned the results of their sting operations to catch those who were ready for bribes to rig the data and leak the details of households.
It even included taped meetings and emails and minutes of the meeting wherein Neilsen agreed in emails that the data could be fudged. They assured appropriate action on the same by July 1st, 2012. The top executives of Neilsen flew down and studied the issue. They were surprised at the extent to which the fudging happened. TAM was supposed to stop the release of the ratings but continued to release.
That was the time TAM almost lost its credibility and bigwigs of the broadcasting industry began to keep their distance from TAM. Among the dissenters was Subhash Chandra of the Essel Group, which runs Zee.
After complaints the then Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Ambika Soni appointed Amit Misra Committee to review TAM’s operations. The committee was to come with recommendations, solutions and alternative suggestions to capture the exact television viewing habits of the Indian audience.
On the 25th of November, 2010 the committee having experts submitted the recommendation. Let us explore what were the committee’s findings in the next edition.
