JOIN USCould this be News TV’s nadir? Let’s hope so!
Arnab Goswami and his ilk have not just caricatured news television in the public eye, they’ve further poisoned the public’s frustrated relationship with TV news. And in doing so, they might have struck at a core pillar of the industry’s business model -- measuring viewership. The latest television ratings scandal, besides squeezing out any remaining trust that people have in news television, might hurt the television industry’s precarious financial position.
News television, like most other media formats, makes nearly all its money from advertising. And advertising on TV is built on the foundation of viewership data that is currently supplied by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), a television industry-supported body that surveys 44,000 Indian households, or approximately 190,000 viewers. BARC surveys these households and tells advertisers what 197 million homes (836 million people) are likely to be watching on TV every week.
This helps advertisers plan how they want to spend money on television advertising, which takes up 36.5% of total advertising spend across India. Audience measurement is the oxygen for any communication medium that depends on advertising for survival. But measuring anything in a country as complex as India isn’t simple, especially if you’re using archaic methods, tiny sample sizes, and decision-making by committee. So, naturally, there’s a growing degree of skepticism about BARC’s methodology and what it means. Does it tell us what India is really watching on TV? Sunil Lulla, BARC’s CEO, said in an interview last week that the body is looking to change the way it measures niche categories -- categories that have less than 0.5% of overall viewership. And yes, English news television is a niche category in India as per BARC.
The ongoing spat between Republic TV, Mumbai Police and two more channels could have some of the makings of the Tarun Tejpal-type controversy that pushed Tehelka (and news magazine publishing in general) into the vortex of irrelevance. Or, it might have the ingredients of the ’90s match-fixing controversy that saw millions of fans fall out of love with cricket. But we needn’t look that far for comparisons with previous controversies.
Eight years ago, NDTV took Television Audience Measurement (TAM), a Nielsen-Kantar company that specialises in TV viewership measurement, to court in New York state. At the heart of that dispute was what’s being alleged by Mumbai Police today -- rigged TV ratings. The difference, of course, is that then it was a TV channel accusing the measurement agency of fraud. In the Republic TV vs Mumbai Police saga, it is the channel being accused of conspiring to fix the viewership numbers by messing with the agency’s methodology.
The fallout of the NDTV-TAM case was bitter. It hurt an industry that was seeing double-digit growth in an economy that was still on the upswing. It made advertisers more skeptical of legacy formats like television. And it marked the beginning of advertisers becoming enchanted with digital. They started spending a larger portion of their money on it -- websites, apps, search engines, and social networks (the last two categories are mere euphemisms for Google and Facebook). The short point is this: Money spent on digital advertising has grown to the point where it is about to become second to what is spent on television. It will overtake newspapers and magazines, radio, outdoor and any other form of sponsored communication through media.
The ongoing TV ratings dispute is bludgeoning the reputation of an industry that isn’t known for its ethical business practices or professionalism. Large companies have said they will not advertise on television networks that air ‘toxic content’. Fortunately, the NDTV-TAM case led to the birth of BARC, which managed to build somewhat of a trusted reporting mechanism for advertisers. And the television industry has had a decent run since then.
But with BARC numbers now being held back, a police investigation underway, and Goswami and his ilk not backing off, news TV might be seeing its nadir (at least, one should hope so!). This time, advertisers might choose to make radical shifts away from television altogether, leaving a tottering industry worse off.
Will news broadcasters pause to think if it’s worth chasing TV ratings and making it the benchmark for success in news programming? Many people are clamouring to find sources of news they can trust and start to feel informed and enriched by. This is a good moment for those looking to do journalism that adds value instead of shredding the public’s trust in the medium itself. After all, are fixed television ratings really the problem or is it television programming itself?