Wednesday Post

For last few days, there have been constant news in print & social media and TV news regarding Republic news channel and some other channels bribing Television Rating Point Agency (TRP) to fudge the figures to show that these channels have more viewership then actual. As per Mumbai Police allegations  the Republic news channel paid money to TRP monitoring agency Hansa Research to give inflated viewership figures so that it will help to attract more  advertisement on the news channel. Earlier Mumbai Police said Republic has made payment to Hansa Research, but Republic replied that the transaction between them and Hansa Vision was for on air advertisement done between October 2017 & 2018. All channels receive advertising money from media buying companies and that is not a  crime.

Now Mumbai Police gave a statement “ According to general business ethics and guidelines issued by Information & Broadcasting (I&B) ministry, Hansa Research or any of its associate companies can not engage in business with any TV channel whose TRP is being monitored by the rating agency Broadcasting Audience Research Council (BARC), even for the purpose of advertising. Hansa group is directly associated with BARC for installing Bar-o-meters at end viewer’s place.” So now Mumbai police along with criminal charges,  are also talking of non ethical practices.

Now ,  all of us are hearing so much about TRP, but actually

What is TRP?

TRP is a Television Rating Point. It is the tool that tells us which channel and the programme are viewed most or it indicates the popularity of a TV channel or a programme. It shows how many times people are watching a channel or a particular programme. TRP enables advertisers and investors to understand the mood of the people. According to the TRP of a TV Channel or programme, advertisers decide where to display their advertisements and investors will decide about the investment of the money.

How to calculate or check TRP?

Do you know that TRP is calculated by Indian agencies namely INTAM and DART? INTAM is an Indian Television Audience Measurement. Earlier, DART that is Doordarshan Audience Research TV Ratings was used to calculate these ratings as that time the only channel available was only Doordarshan.  Still, DART exists and is an agency that takes the TV viewing pattern of rural people into consideration. They randomly pick people and question them about the various channels and TV programmes and also use electronic methods to get viewership statistics.

The following two electronic methods are there for calculating TRP:

1.People meters device is installed in some places or set in selected homes to calculate the TRP. In this way, some thousand viewers are surveyed in the form of justice and sampling. These gadgets record data about the channel or programme watched by the family members or selected people. Through this meter, the information of TV channel or programme for one minute is carried out by the INTAM a monitoring team i.e. Indian Television Audience Measurement. After analysing the information, the team decides what is the TRP of the channel or programme. Or we can say that this data is later analysed by the agency to create a national TRP data of various TV channels and TV programmes.

2. Second method is known as picture matching where the people meter records a small portion of the picture that is being watched on the TV. This data is collected from a set of homes in the form of pictures and later on is analysed to calculate the TRPs.

What happens when TRP increases or decreases?

The increase or decrease in the TRP of any programme directly affects the income of that TV channel in which the programme is coming. Do you know that any TV channel like Sony, Star Plus, Z Channel, etc. earn money through advertisements? If suppose the TRP of a program or channel is low which means that people are watching it less, so advertisers will give fewer advertisements and pay less.  But, if the TRP is high for the programme then more advertisements, advertisers, and money. So, we can say that TRP depends not only on the channel but on the programme as well. For example, if the TRP of a programme says Rising Star is higher than any other programme then the advertiser would like to give advertisements in that programme and also pay more.

What is TRP Rate?

The TRP rate is one on which the TRP of a TV channel is calculated. TRP of any channel or programme depends upon the programme that is displayed. It can be understood that when a film star arrives in a program for the promotion of his movie, the TRP of that programme increases automatically because people like to see that film star more.

So now you might have understood that the TRP is the thing, which helps in tracking the popularity and viewers of any program or channel.

So how the TRP can be increased- generally it is done with the help of agency who is monitoring the meters installed at home. This agency can bribe the person of the house to see the particular program or channel  for more number of hours. Secondly it is also being done through just keeping the TV on with certain channel even without watching it. In this case person must be having a second TV at home where he can watch whatever program he wants to watch, and leave the TV one where TRP meter is installed.

I hope, you all will enlightened with this information on TRP

Waiting for your views/comments/feed backs on this blog.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

28^th October 2020