TAM tales from Andhra Pradesh
So we now have not only paid news, but also paid ratings, paid carriage and paid placement.
SEVANTI NINAN on the TV industry’s ecosystem in Andhra Pradesh (Pics courtesy: Andhra 24x7.info, tab2tab.com)
Reprinted from Mint, August 23, 2012
TALKING MEDIA
Sevanti Ninan
NDTV’s New York lawsuit against A C Nielsen has refocused attention on TAM, the audience measurement currency that has been controversial for some years. So far the issue has been framed in India-wide terms in the current debate. But it is instructive to examine it from the perspective of a regional TV industry. When you do that you discover a whole ecosystem of news broadcasting and distribution-related malpractices which need to be taken note of.
Take Andhra Pradesh. The state has 46 Telugu language cable and satellite channels, and eight dubbed Telugu language channels. Around 14 of these are news channels. The visual product is colourful to put it mildly, but the industry shenanigans that underpin it, even more so. The estimated advertising spend for this state is around Rs 550-600 crore. Not such a lot of money for 54 channels to chase.
Right after the NDTV suit made headlines a Telugu news channel called HMTV decided to go public with some footage they said they had shot seven or eight months earlier. It was a sting which captured on camera people from the ratings agency TAM, removing the people meter installed in a house. The story essentially echoed many similar instances cited in NDTV’s 194 page submission in a New York court. A family in Guntur which had a people meter was asked by the ratings agency to watch a particular channel. In this case the household informed HMTV (or so the channel claims) and their cameraman reached their home in time to see the meter being removed because the family was not obliging.
The channel says it had not telecast the footage earlier intending to use it if it went to court, but when the NDTV lawsuit became public it decided to use it, and created a minor sensation in the process.
The debate around TAM following the NDTV case is focusing on the small number of people meters being used to measure a very large population. But the channel’s contention in its suit is two-fold. It alleges both corruption as well as grossly inadequate sampling. The “why” of this corruption figures in the NDTV submission but is not the part that either industry or government or the media are paying sufficient attention to.
Here is what the NDTV lawsuit says: Many politicians who own news networks (one-third of all news networks in India) and cable operations (60% of cable operations) continue to benefit from the corruption of data and Nielsen/Kantar’s refusal to stop publication of such data. It further says, “All of NDTV’s losses and complaints as noted in this Complaint were presented to those senior officials of Nielsen and Kantar at that meeting, along with evidence supporting such losses and complaints, the parties involved in rampant corruption, which, by the very nature of television and cable operations in India included politicians.”
Channel executives one spoke to in Andhra Pradesh argue likewise. Nobody is willing to be quoted by name or company on this subject. Says one, “Corporate ownership has been replaced by all kinds of guys getting into media. It costs around Rs 150 crore to start a channel. They also use their money to breach the system.” Says another CEO of a group of channels, “New channel managements have their own businesses which they are trying to protect. They spend this Rs 1 crore to save their other businesses and their political parties.”
In essence, even channels not serious about the news business need to figure decently in TAM ratings, to prove that they have viewership. What ensues from there is manipulation at various levels. At the ground level where the boxes are, where says one media executive, information will leak out because all the workers at this level are not well paid. There is manipulation at the cable bouquet placement level so that the channel gets visibility and therefore ratings.
On Wednesdays when the ratings are released, everybody dissects them looking for funny trends. In 10 million plus towns suddenly TV9, the news channel, is garnering more TRPs than Gemini movies or Maa movies.
In 1 million plus towns there are more suspicious trends. TV 9 gets a weekly rating Of 4.6, ETV2 gets .43. And NTV 1.28. But in Hyderabad city where there is a concentration of people meters these three have ratings less than one point apart.
In 1 million plus towns there are more suspicious trends. TV 9 gets a weekly rating Of 4.6, ETV2 gets .43. And NTV 1.28. But in Hyderabad city where there is a concentration of people meters these three have ratings less than one point apart.
What is at work is incentivising of the cable MSO in various ways, possible incentivising of the ratings organisation staff at the field level, and of the families in homes where people meters are installed. (the NDTV submission cites examples for other parts of the country)
Says a channel CEO, “Running a media organisation is nothing but running a mafia organisation.” You play the game, but if you have a conscience of sorts you do not enjoy it. On his table is a letter from the police department citing a viewer complaint that this news channel was showing semi-pornographic film clips late at night. That 11.30 pm band gets ratings, and it puts you ahead as a channel with more shows among the top 10 shows in a particular week. Several news channels in Andhra Pradesh show crime or titillating film clips in this time band.
There are other tricks as well. When you flip through a cable channel’s offerings you find two news channels nestling between a bunch of GECs (general entertainment channels.) That is paid placement. It could cost upwards of a crore a year but when a viewer is surfing entertainment channels he goes past your channel giving you some ratings in the process. When SETMax has IPL on it, if you get placed next to it, it helps your ratings.
Political money pushes up costs for rival channels. Jagan Mohan Reddy's Sakshi has 25 OB vans. So competitors have had to move up, one from six to 12. (Doordarshan in AP has two.) Does AP generate enough daily news to merit 25 OB vans? Probably not, but it helps give a political leader real time coverage. When he is not in jail, that is.
“Sociologically time spent on TV is coming down”, says one channel marketing executive. “But arithmetically it is going up. A new news channel’s rating starts going up every week. You wait for it to come down, but it does not.”
And finally, until digitisation comes and makes placement irrelevant, the MSO (multi system operator) is king. One celebrated his daughter's birthday earlier this month, and channel managements sent gifts valued in lakhs. Moreover, channel managers say politicians in AP are getting into the cable TV business here.
So we now have not only paid news, but also paid ratings, paid carriage and paid placement. And burgeoning news channel ownership by people with a variety of non-news interests as the Indian Express pointed out on August 19, 2012.
Having substantially more people meters will certainly make tampering more difficult. But for the Information and Broadcasting Ministry and others to focus their attention on just this issue is to look at only one part of a larger, vitiated picture.