|
TAM tales from Andhra Pradesh….Sevanti Ninan
The debate around TAM following the NDTV case is focusing on the small number of people meters being used to measure a very large population The New York lawsuit by New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) against The Nielsen Co. and its affiliates has refocused attention on TAM, the audience measurement currency that has been controversial for some years. So far, the issue has been framed in India-wide terms in the current debate, but it is instructive to examine it from the perspective of a regional TV industry. When you do that, you discover a whole ecosystem of news broadcasting and distribution-related malpractices that need to be taken note of.
Take Andhra Pradesh. The state has 46 Telugu-language cable and satellite channels, and 8 others dubbed into Telugu. Around 14 of these are news channels. The visual product is colourful, to put it mildly; the industry shenanigans that underpin it, even more so. The estimated advertising spending for this state is around Rs.550-600 crore—not such a lot of money for 54 channels to chase.
Right after the NDTV lawsuit made headlines, Telugu news channel HMTV decided to go public with some footage it said it had shot seven or eight months earlier. It was a sting that captured on camera people from the TV rating agency TAM, removing the people meter installed in a house. (TAM is a joint venture between Nielsen and Kantar, the market research arm of London-based advertising and public relations firm WPP Plc, and was launched in 1998 to provide television viewership data.)
The HMTV story essentially echoed many similar instances cited in NDTV’s 194-page submission in a New York court. A family in Guntur that had a people meter was asked by the ratings agency to watch a particular channel. In this case, the household informed HMTV (or so the channel claims) and its cameraman reached their home in time to see the meter being removed because the family was not obliging the rating agency.
The channel says it had not telecast the footage earlier, intending to use it if it went to court, but when the NDTV lawsuit became public, it decided to use it, and created a minor sensation in the process.
The debate around TAM following the NDTV case is focusing on the small number of people meters being used to measure a very large population, but the channel’s contention in its suit is twofold. It alleges both corruption as well as grossly inadequate sampling. The “why” of this alleged corruption figures in the 194-page submission, but is not the part that either industry or government or the media are paying sufficient attention to.
Here is what the NDTV lawsuit says: Many politicians who own news networks (one-third of all news networks in India) and cable operations (60% of cable operations) continue to benefit from the corruption of data and Nielsen/Kantar’s refusal to stop publication of such data.
Channel executives one spoke to in Andhra Pradesh argue likewise. Nobody is willing to be quoted by name or company on this subject. Says one: “Corporate ownership has been replaced by all kinds of guys getting into media. It costs around Rs.150 crore to start a channel. They also use their money to breach the system.” Says another CEO of a company that runs several channels: “New channel managements have their own businesses which they are trying to protect. They spend this Rs.1 crore to save their other businesses and their political parties.”
In essence, even channels not serious about the news business need to figure decently in TAM ratings, to prove that they have a viewership. What ensues from there is manipulation at various levels. At the ground level where the boxes are, says one media executive, information will leak out because all the workers at this level are not well paid. There is manipulation at the cable bouquet placement level so that the channel gets visibility and therefore ratings.
On Wednesdays, when the ratings are released, everybody dissects them looking for funny trends. In towns with a population in excess of 10 million, suddenly, TV9, the news channel, is garnering more TRPs than Gemini Movies or Maa Movies.
In towns with a population in excess of 1 million , there are more intriguing trends. TV9 gets a weekly rating of 4.6, ETV2 gets 0.43. And NTV 1.28. But in Hyderabad city, where there is a concentration of people meters, these three channels have ratings less than one point apart.
What is at work is incentivizing of the cable MSO (multi-system operator, a sort of large cable operator) in various ways, possible incentivizing of the ratings organization staff at the field level, and of the families at homes where people meters are installed. (The NDTV submission cites examples from other parts of the country.)
Says a channel CEO: “Running a media organization is nothing but running a mafia organization.” You play the game, but if you have a conscience of sorts, you do not enjoy it. On his table is a letter from the police department citing a viewer complaint that his news channel was showing semi-pornographic film clips late at night. That 11.30pm band gets ratings, and it puts you ahead as a channel with more shows in the Top 10 in a particular week. Several news channels in Andhra Pradesh show crime or titillating film clips in this time band.
There are other tricks as well. When you flip through a cable channel’s offerings, you find two news channels nestling between a bunch of GECs (general entertainment channels). That is paid placement. It could cost upwards of Rs.1 crore a year, but when a viewer is surfing entertainment channels, he goes past your channel giving you some ratings in the process. When SET Max has IPL on it, and you get placed next to it, it helps your ratings.
Political money pushes up costs for rival channels. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s Sakshi has 25 OB (outdoor broadcast) vans. So competitors have had to move up, one from six to 12 (Doordarshan in Andhra Pradesh has two). Does Andhra Pradesh generate enough daily news to merit 25 OB vans? Probably not, but it helps give a political leader real time coverage. When he is not in jail, that is.
“Sociologically, time spent on TV is coming down,” says one channel marketing executive. “But arithmetically, it is going up. A new news channel’s rating starts going up every week. You wait for it to come down, but it does not.”
And finally, until digitization comes and makes placement irrelevant, the MSO is king. One celebrated his daughter’s birthday earlier this month, and channel managements sent gifts valued at lakhs of rupees. Moreover, channel managers say politicians in Andhra Pradesh are getting into the cable TV business.
So, we now have not only paid news, but also paid ratings, paid carriage and paid placement, and burgeoning news channel ownership by people with a variety of non-news interests, as The Indian Express pointed on 19 August.
Therefore, for the information and broadcasting ministry and others to focus their attention just on the number of people meters deployed is to look at only one part of a larger, vitiated picture.
Sevanti Ninan is a media critic, author and editor of the media watch website thehoot.org. She examines the larger issues related to the media in a fortnightly column.
Respond to this column at feedback@livemint.com
|