MEC: KBC to deliver 10 per cent higher viewership

As Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) gets ready to lure audiences with the power of knowledge on extended weekends, MEC has predicted that the property is expected to deliver 10 per cent higher viewership compared to its last season.

The key influencing factors that helped MEC infer the KBC growth were programme promotions on the channel, network and also other channels, promotion across other media like radio and newspapers, search volume index as a measure of viewer buzz and the base channel share of the airing channel.

Based on this methodology, MEC estimates that KBC's rating for the opening weekend will be 5.4 TVRs among adults in the 15+ age bracket, SEC ABC, All India. This is a 10 per cent increase over the opening TVR of 4.9 in the last season.

It is pertinent to note here that the approach used by MEC for the KBC rating forecast is based on the insight that the increase in TVRs for a new programme depends on a combination of increase in people using television (PUT) and people already viewing television moving to the new programme from their regular programming. MEC and Meritus built a statistical model using a set of TV shows to understand the factors affecting PUT and channel share for such non-sports programmes.

Geetha Shiv, national director, analytics and insight, MEC, says, "The performance of this season of KBC will be followed closely by media and clients given that the last season had helped Sony displace competition. MEC's initiative in estimating ratings of such high expectation properties like IPL, World Cup and now KBC, is part of our endeavour to deliver insights that help our clients in formulating their investment decisions."

According to Sunder Muthuraman, managing partner, Meritus Analytics, for big properties where the cost of association is high, the rating the programme delivers can be looked at as a very simple measure of ROI. "We have used best in class statistical methods to estimate KBC ratings. Our finding that KBC advertising on other channels had the highest impact on the increased PUT of the programme time slot seems to suggest that a substantial part of the increased rating is likely from viewers of other channels and time bands tuning into Sony during KBC."