New TRP system to start early next year

38 global agencies in race to draw blueprint for BARC's TV audience measurement system

The long wait for another television ratings measurement (TRP) system will end next year. The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), the audience research measurement body formed jointly by broadcasters, advertisers and advertising agencies, will start its audience measurement by the first quarter of 2014.

While it took much longer than expected, Manjit Singh, president of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation and Chief Executive of Multi Screen media (MSM), says the industry has committed to the Information & Broadcasting Ministry on the rollout of BARC in the first quarter.

"BARC is very much on; it took time because three different bodies - IBF, Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) and the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) - were to be brought on the same page. Now we have the agreement, we have formed the board, and have got great response on the global Request for Information (RFI) that we issued."

BARC had issued the RFI in January, seeking ideas, templates and experiences on television audience measurement that will help it to draw up a blueprint for a new TV audience measurement system. Singh said that they received 38 responses from across the globe.

On the vision for BARC, he said the current TV ratings measurement system by TAM had many loopholes and there was a need for a much more robust system.

MSM, he said, was even considering cancelling the subscription of TAM data, as the company didn't want to be measured on an imperfect system.

Interestingly, for creating a reliable TV rating system, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had issued a paper on Wednesday, to deal with issues of establishing an accreditation mechanism for the rating agency and methodology of audience measurement. TRAI's consultation paper seeks to get the views of stakeholders on sample size, secrecy of sample homes, cross holding between rating agencies and their users, complaint redressal, sale and use of ratings, disclosure and reporting requirement, competition in rating services, and audit.

Broadcasters have been questioning the credibility of TV ratings provided by TAM Media Research, a joint venture between Nielsen and Kantar Media. The IBF, which owns 60 per cent stake in BARC, has since been working with the AAAI and the ISA to set up BARC as an alternative to TAM. Both AAAI and ISA have 20 per cent stake each in BARC.

TRAI has also mentioned in its paper that incorrect ratings will lead to production of content which may not be really popular. On the process, Singh said, "There will be a lot more boxes, close to 20,000-25,000, so the sample size will be far bigger. We will break-up the system into people who put in the meters, people who collect the data and people who will analyse it. Right now, it's only the black box called TAM. There will be checks and balances in each stage, which will prevent frauds or tampering with the data."

He added that the process needs a very big establishment study. "We are talking about 300,000-400,000 homes. No doubt, it has taken longer than it should have. But, everything is running smooth now," Singh explained.