TRP panel calls for widening survey ambit

Eight-member committee wants 30,000 houses in rural and urban areas to be covered

The eight-member TRP committee, which submitted its 70-page report to Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni on Monday, also expressed concern over the “lack of transparency in the methodology” of TRP measurement and recommended that selection process of rating agency should be carried out in a “credible, transparent and statistically robust manner, which should be subjected to financial and process audit.”

Audience Measurement and Analytics Limited (aMap) and TAM are the two agencies currently mapping and measuring TV programme viewers’ trends in the country.

The committee, constituted by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in May last year in the backdrop of perceived deficiencies in the current system of TRP generation in India and its possible impact on the programming content of TV channels, noted that TAM’s coverage of about 8,150 sample homes and aMap’s 6,000 homes “is not adequate” in view of the 129 million TV households in India,.

“The committee recommends an increase in sample size to 1,500 urban and rural households over a period of two years and then 30,000 over the next three years,” it said.

Rural areas were left unrepresented as no people-meters installed there.

Corporation

The committee, headed by Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Secretary-General Amit Mitra, also recommended broadening of the constitution of a broadcast audience research corporation to make it more inclusive.

The corporation should have representation from broadcasters, advertisers, and advertising agencies including public service broadcasters, the eight-member committee recommended in its report.

It also suggested that the corporation should have a 12-member board consisting of seven broadcasters, three advertisers and two advertising agencies, including Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity.

It also recommended constitution of a high-powered committee within the broadcast audience research corporation to guide it in research, design and analysis.

After receiving the report, Soni said her ministry will examine the report in “great detail”.
The committee suggested that broadcasters, advertisers and advertising agencies should pay a certain percentage of their relevant turnovers to the corporation on an annual basis to fund the expansion of sample size for TRP measurement.

The committee noted that people-meters attract 50 per cent import duty which makes them expensive. Hence, it suggested reduction in the import duty.