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TV RATINGS COME IN FOR SOME STICK
The two TV ratings systems in India
have come in for a lot of stick from broadcasters,
advertising agencies and advertisers. Last week a
group of them met in Mumbai with the intention of
forcing Intam (run by the VNU-owned ORG-Marg) and
TAM (run by A.C. Nielsen and the Indian Market Research
Bureau) to merge their resources.
Last year, Zee TV had unambiguously said that the
two ratings systems, which are costing advertisers,
agencies and advertisers pots of money, should pool
their resources instead of competing. The competition
between the two has resulted in huge discrepancies
in viewership ratings for television shows between
the two systems though they have similar samples and
peoplemeters. While the TAM ratings revealed that
Zee TV was losing ground rapidly to Sony Entertainment
in terms of shows, the Intam rating showed that it
was holding on to its share.
TAM was given the contract a couple of years ago to
set up the official viewership rating system for India
by the Joint Industry Body, consisting of broadcasters,
advertisers, and agencies. ORG-Marg set up its own
monitoring system with backing from the Dutch VNU
group, thus splitting the industry on which of the
two should be the currency.
Ad agencies have gripes about the speed
of the software needed to analyse the viewing data,
the pricing of viewing data, the rollout of peoplemeters
nationally to get a better fix on viewing patterns,
and the picture matching technology being used in
the meters. A bunch of media planners and broadcasters
have gone to the extent of saying that TAM should
merge with Intam as it has singularly failed in the
mandate the industry had given it. They believed that
a merged system will iron out the creases in the viewing
sample, reduce duplication, better cost efficiencies,
and hence greater reliability.
TAM, however, says that it is taking
every step to correct the bugs in its system and that
it should be given more time. But A.C. Nielsen managing
director Partho Rakshit is believed to be open to
the idea of fusion.
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