The great Indian TV rating TAMasha!

With BARC replacing JIB to oversee and control the TV audience measurement system in India, a part of its wish list stands to be fulfilled

The formation of new industry body BARC to replace JIB has direct repercussions for one organisation – TAM.

While Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) is looking for a research agency to conduct television viewership measurement in the country, agencyfaqs! tries to find out what went wrong with the existing currency, and what the future holds.

It may be recalled that the ad industry had come together in October 1997 to form a Joint Industry Body (JIB) consisting of IBF and AAAI, which had, after detailed evaluation, signed an agreement with ACNielsen and Kantar Media Research/IMRB – thus was TAM born. The absence of a formal structure for JIB led to it not being in a position to strictly implement what it had set out to do. BARC has been introduced to overcome these shortcomings.

Says Paritosh Joshi, president, STAR India, “Our only concern was what happens to audience measurement with expansion in genres, classes, channels and viewers. There was a need to upgrade the quality and scope of TV audience research and to have more robust findings and more transparent funding.”

“Currently, we only map 40 per cent of data. This needs to be increased to 100 per cent,” adds Rohit Gupta, president, SET.

TAM’s reaction to this has been that it has long moved beyond merely providing television ratings, and this is why the company, which started off as Television Audience Measurement, changed to become TAM Media Research. According to TAM, it has already taken the initiative of providing television measurement on newer platforms such as CAS (Conditional Access System) and DTH (Direct to Home). Besides, TAM launched S Group in 2002, which was launched to help broadcasters understand the media landscape better and fuel insights to drive business.

Currently, TAM has 7,000 peoplemeters across Class I towns (with population in excess of 1,00,000), which broadcasters feel isn’t sufficient for the ever-expanding television industry.

“Today, we can’t measure data for smaller cities, which are believed to be the backbone of television viewership. And then we have technology issues, with new technology mushrooming every day; we simply can’t ignore it,” says Gupta of SET.

He adds that if TAM could update itself, it would be good enough, otherwise the body would have to look at other options. “It’s not about TAM or any other body, we need 100 per cent data. It doesn’t matter from where we get it.”

Joshi of STAR India further comments on this, “It’s natural that as technology and tastes expand, an able and credible measurement system emerges to track the dynamic and heterogeneous audience tastes and patterns of media consumption.”

Industry veterans feel that the coming together of AAAI (Advertising Agencies Association India), ISA (Indian Society of Advertisers) and IBF (Indian Broadcasters Federation) to formalise this new body, BARC, will be able to tackle legislative issues currently impacting research.

TAM Media Research’s rationale is that if scientists have to finance their scientific projects, it can’t go on for long. Objectives can be realised only when the industry backs them.

The major difficulty with rural areas is infrastructural problems. For instance, many of the areas go without power. So, getting data from small towns has a lot to do with the infrastructure available there. In these markets, broadcasting is still analogue, and this will require TAM to install analogue peoplemeters, and if the government decides to go digital in the rural areas a few years from now, the cost of replacing them with digital peoplemeters will be huge. So, before any such step is taken, the industry body should have dialogue with the government to know the roadmap ahead.

In fact, on ideas of moving into smaller towns and rural markets, TAM believes it will be really wonderful if this new association could engage with the government in a constructive and consultative manner (and perhaps even request Doordarshan’s involvement), to work out a road map in the domain of digitisation. Post that, for TAM, it will be easier to work out a detailed blueprint for expansion of its panel beyond Class I towns.

Defining the importance of BARC, Manish Porwal adds, “I think it will provide accurate, up to date and relevant research relating to television and other audio/video media, including but not restricted to TV ratings and spot ratings without fear or favour in a completely transparent and objective manner and at a reasonable cost to users.”

According to Porwal, it’s a system similar to BARB, a system responsible for providing estimates of the number of people watching television. This includes which channels and programmes are being watched, at what time, and the type of people who are watching at any one time. BARB provides television audience data on a minute by minute basis for channels received within the UK. The data is available for reporting nationally and at the ITV and BBC regional levels and covers all analogue and digital platforms.