'Vested interests delaying alternative rating agency'

STAR India Chief Executive Officer Uday Shankar has blamed advertising bodies for delaying the implementation of a broadcasting rating agency to function as an alternative to TAM.

The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) was set up after a tripartite agreement between the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), an association of all leading broadcasters, the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA).

The IBF would contribute 60 per cent equity stake, while of the remaining 40 per cent, 20 per cent each would come from the AAAI and the ISA.

Shankar said: “TAM covers just one-third of the TV-viewing universe. There are some people who are obvious beneficiaries of this. If two out of three messages are being delivered and you are not having to directly pay for it, then it does create vested interests among a set of people, who would not want that arrangement to change. And that’s why broadcasters have been the victims of it,”

The STAR chief’s views are significant, as he is also the president of IBF. The comments have come at a point when TAM is under heavy public scrutiny after news broadcaster NDTV filed a lawsuit against it and the owners, Nielsen and Kantar (a WPP group company) in the Supreme Court of New York. After the lawsuit, even the government has asked for the speedy implementation of BARC while public broadcaster Prasar Bharati is also looking to take legal action against the TV viewership agency.

NDTV has accused TAM and its promoter companies of fudging viewership data in favour of networks that were willing to bribe its officials in India. NDTV’s lawsuit in the US had listed 42 counts and had sought $810 million as compensation for the revenue loss it suffered over the years due to the alleged fudged viewership ratings. It has also sought $580 million as penalty for negligence by Nielsen and Kantar officials.

Meanwhile, Shankar agreed that there were huge issues with the TAM data, “which every stakeholder accepts and there are enough unanswered questions”.

But on formation of the BARC, he said the other stakeholders had been making unusual demands just to delay the process. “When we started the discussion, there was a bizarre demand from the advertisers that they want 50 per cent (in BARC) and they don’t want to pay for it.”

However, Shankar said while these issues have been resolved there was one contentious issue which still needed a solution. “If additional funding is required for the functioning of BARC and if we cannot raise debt, some of them do not want to put in equity and at the same time do not want to dilute stake.”

It was easy to say people had delayed the process but had to understand there were clear reasons to suspect the commitment of some of the stakeholders to the more transparent, more representative system that would unlock the real value for the advertising inventory, he added.

Shankar also said in case the situation arose, broadcasters would set up the alternative rating agency on their own. “BARC is a reality and I think it will happen. The solution is in sight. It could happen much faster, it’s like a whole lot of other things that vested interest groups in this country have tried to delay. The issues will be resolved and if they (other stakeholders) don’t come on board, IBF would have to go ahead and do it on its own,” Shankar added.

Talking about TAM, he said its business model existed primarily because of the subscription fee that broadcasters paid and if they stopped subscribing to TAM, it would collapse.