Gifts, money to get TRP data raise stink

Television Audience Measurement Media Research says that it has been giving gifts and financial incentives to people to install meters at their homes to gauge popularity of television programmes, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 16, 2008, 02:25:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Is there something fishy in the way popularity of television programmes is measured in India?

Leading private viewership measuring company Television Audience Measurement (TAM) Media Research on Thursday said it has been giving gifts and financial incentives to people to install meters at their homes to gauge popularity of television programmes.

Although there is nothing wrong in such incentives, this raises doubts on whether these households, so important for rating programmes and consequently having a bearing on advertisement revenue, were being influenced by certain private broadcasters.

TAM denied it, but there have been allegations that these homes were being revealed to broadcasters, helping them to influence the ratings of their popular programmes.

TAM uses 7,000 households in cities with more than one lakh population to collect data.

L.V. Krishnan, TAM CEO, admitted to giving gifts at a meeting called by telecom regulator TRAI to seek suggestions from stakeholders to revamp the television rating points (TRP) system in India.

Several broadcasters and cable operators doubted the credibility of the firm’s TRP methodology at the meet following which TRAI member A.K. Sawhney asked Krishnan whether TAM was giving gifts to install meters. Krishnan said giving gifts TV sets at times was necessary. “Without that it would be difficult for us to install the meters,” he said. But he denied allegations that this caused any manipulation in TAM data.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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