Sony takes TAM to task

Multi Screen Media's (MSM) general entertainment channel, Sony Entertainment Television (Sony) claims that its fall in the GEC ratings (provided by television audience measurement company TAM) is predominantly due to the way TAM is carrying out its measurements and sampling. The channel, which has been shuffling between the fourth, fifth and sometimes the sixth spots in Hindi GECs for the last nine-10 months, feels the inclusion of less-than-class-I (LC I) markets has not borne well for its ratings. Class-I markets are the towns and cities with a population of 100,000 plus.

Sneha Rajani, senior vice president and business head, Sony, says, "I know it is always easy to blame TAM, but it is a reality. The whole digitisation, its impact, the LCI expansion has seen us lose 40 GRPs (gross rating points or the percentage of eyeballs captured) overnight. It means that the change in measurement has affected our ratings because you cannot attribute the loss only to content."

PAST IMPERFECT

• In the past, channel networks have taken on TAM for various inefficiencies in the measurement process.
• In 2002, the Zee Group had taken objection to TAM ratings and even unsubscribed the rating agency’s data for a while.
• In 2012, NDTV filed a case in the New York Supreme Court, alleging that TAM had manipulated ratings and that there was rampant corruption in the TAM system.

Rajani agrees that the channel has been facing problems with its fiction properties, but points out that it could also mean that the shows on Sony are not resonating with the new additional audience brought under TAM's purview. TAM's sample size of panel homes for its peoplemetres has always been questioned by broadcasters over the years.

TAM included the LC I markets in the system in January, 2013. This meant that the contribution of metros (to the universe) reduced. Earlier, the metros contributed 25 to 30 per cent of the universe.

However, an official on behalf of TAM says that Sony has not lost out on reach. The official says, "If you compare Sony's reach in 2012 with this year, there is no loss. It is the time-spent-per-viewer that has decreased and that cannot be attributed to the measurement process. It is a function of the content." He says, "The broadcasters were informed well in advance of the inclusion. The metro- and SEC-A-skewed channels stand to lose numbers as a result, but the data can be sliced to reflect their target audience only."

Sony has maintained over the years that it will not change its metro-focussed audience profile. An observer in the industry adds, "Sony has been and still is doing well in the metros. A few weeks back, its Crime Patrol was the top-rated show of the week beating the likes of Diya Aur Baati Hum and Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai. TAM is able to measure viewership changes when it occurs."

The episode was on the incident of the Delhi gangrape.

TAM maintains that digitisation has not caused any major upsets. "In fact, according to data released by TAM, one sees that the GECs have gained because the placement of channels is such that the viewers tends to jump from one GEC to another during an ad break. Earlier, viewers would change to the previous or next channel linearly, which may not have been GECs," says LV Krishnan, CEO, TAM India.

For the moment there is an impasse between the Sony and TAM with the former not wanting to change its positioning and the latter standing by its methods of measurement.