MUMBAI: Viewership data for individual news channels from 7 October 2012 will be available on 9 January when TAM Media Research, the television ratings service provider, begins releasing ratings data as it used to before digitisation in the four metros.
The decision was made Monday as the industry bodies - Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) and the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) - came to an agreement on this. Earlier, as reported in Indiantelevision.com, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) had agreed for a release of TAM data on viewership of their individual channels for the suspended period from 7 October on 9 January.
Meanwhile, TAM today released data for weeks 41-50 but without individual ratings for news channels. The news genre viewership data was clubbed with the ‘Others‘ category, which includes genres like shopping and religious.
TAM will release data for week 51 on 27 December and for week 52 on 3 January, again without ratings for individual news channels. The news genre will continue to come under the ‘Others‘ category till 9 October.
TAM had suspended data release from 7 October as was agreed by IBF, AAAI and ISA, as digitisation was under way in the metros of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkatta and Chennai.
TAM had to delay release of ratings data for the suspended period on 19 December on a request from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry and the NBA, in concurrence with IBF, AAAI and ISA. NBA wanted temporary suppression of viewership data for individual news channels.
The decision by TAM to release ratings for individual news channels on 9 January is in accordance with the decision of the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) on Friday.
TAM said the suppression of ratings data on news channels "is purely a temporary request from the industry." The retrospective data for the period (weeks 41-52), for all the news channels, will be de-suppressed and released normally (individually) on 9 January with the data release of week 1 of the year 2013.
TAM has released data for weeks 41-52 for digital homes in the three cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, where digitisation has nearly happened. Chennai, which was the fourth city mandated to have gone digital from 1 November, is not included. Digitisation in Chennai, according to a TAM survey, is stuck at around 26 per cent, with the Madras High Court hearing a petition by cable operators against digitisation.
