Our share is growing because TAM has started balancing its sample: Jawhar Sircar

Interview with CEO, Prasar Bharati

Jawhar Sircar, who took over as chief executive of Prasar Bharati Corporation 18 months ago, has been in the news for gunning for Television Audience Measurement (TAM) through the Competition Commission of India (CCI). He has, however,also been making attempts to fix things at Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR), which Prasar Bharati runs. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar spoke to him on ratings, revenues and the reality of India. Edited excerpts:

What is the issue with TAM?
More than 68 per cent of India lives below the casbah level. About 60 per cent TV viewership is also there. My contention is that the rating sample should reflect that ratio. At least 60 per cent of the sample should be towns below 100,000. Whether they have buying capacity or not is a separate point. Currently, of the 9,500 (people)meters, 1,400 are in LC I (less than class one) towns (they have been added very recently). Even if all of them are operating, they are still not 60 per cent of the sample. Nevertheless, our point gets proven because the addition of those 1,400 meters has instantly started showing results (shows rating charts for the last few months). Our share is growing because they have started removing the skew in the sample.

What does DD want?

We want transparency in the positioning of peoplemeters under any system - TAM or BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council). There must be a reasonable fidelity to the stratification of the TV-viewing population. We are still using TAM data. And, I am of the view that we do need a currency. So, I got my team to talk to TAM and share details of their sample. When that did not work, we complained to CCI. And that stirred things up. Now, TAM's new 1,400 meters have finally catalysed BARC.

If DD is a not-for-profit body, why does the commercial currency matter?

Because we have to earn our keep. In March 2013, our total expenditure was Rs 3,200 crore. Of this, Rs 1,700 crore is salaries, the rest is operating expenditure. In the August 2012 Cabinet report, the government has said it will pay the salary part the rest of it we have to manage without being a burden on the taxpayer. If you didn't ask me to earn Rs 1,500-odd crore, I can show you ad-free programming. As things stand, as a public service broadcaster I have to cover every part of India, North-East, Kashmir and Poonch and offer all the things that private broadcasters don't. For example, in Manipur, a state with a population of 2.7 million, we broadcast in 30 languages every day.

Should the government get into ratings?
No, it should not.

What is the vision for Doordarshan?
When I came in, in February last year, one of the first things was to get all the units of Prasar Bharati (DD, AIR) to operate as one company. The nine members of DD and AIR (the director generals) went all over India meeting field staff. Some of the results are showing. When the Bodhgaya bombings, happened the AIR correspondent was the first guy to reach there. He then did a phone-in for DD as well. This would never have happened two years ago. We have got in outside advisors (like Meenakshi Menon, Spatial access, and Barun Das, former chief executive of Zee News) to give us inputs on various areas. There has been a complete revamp of DD News - in graphics, its depth of coverage. We have started simulcasting (with shows like Satyamev Jayate and Saraswatichandra from STAR). We are refurbishing content in DD Urdu, the national channel and DD Bharati, too.

How will you raise money for the four new Hindi channels and other things?
We are hoping to unlock our assets and make our public infrastructure sharable. We have 1,415 towers. Even if we digitise 630, the cost is approximately Rs 3,200 crore. The spectrum increase will be in the ratio of 1:8 or 1:9. This can then be used for mobile broadcasting. We would like to be the harbinger of common facilities and infrastructure (which can then be shared on a commercial basis to raise money). If the funds are available from a technology development fund, rather than having to approach a phalanx of ministry officials for each tranche, then the upgrade could be done in three-four years.