Download INDIA TV RATINGS CONTROVERSY: THE EMM ANALYSIS TV

INDIA TV RATINGS CONTROVERSY: THE EMM ANALYSIS
TV violence in India has recently been on the rise. And that’s just the audience measurement
system!
A noisy public dispute has broken out between an Indian TV network, the TV ratings service
measuring national TV viewership, and assorted advertising trade bodies. Now India’s
government is weighing in. EMM is concerned at these developments, and has suggestions for
how to resolve differences between the parties to this escalating dispute. We all need to put the
brakes on a runaway train before it smashes into the buffers.
For several weeks, an acrimonious fight has been conducted in Indian TV news reports,
business press and advertising trade publications. A row that has simmered for years has
abruptly boiled over. It concerns television audience measurement and the Indian national TV
ratings service supplied by TAM (a Kantar company in the WPP Group) for over a decade.
Powerful TV interests (notably the NDTV network) have been accusing the TAM service of
corruption and systematic rigging of audience results.
Conflict has rapidly escalated into multilateral finger-pointing and lawsuits, in an atmosphere of
increasing hysteria and mutual vituperation. Broadcaster NDTV has filed a 160-page lawsuit
against TAM in a New York court, alleging flawed methodology and corrupt manipulation of their
ratings service, aimed at systematically depressing NDTV reported audiences by around 60%.
Allegations of bribe-taking are implicit in the suit. Kantar/WPP, TAM’s proprietor, has
repudiated the lawsuit and the accusations, but has presented a six-point action plan to address
concerns about its ratings data.
Meanwhile an industry technical committee is being formed to oversee the design of an
audience measurement system for television in India, under a newly-constituted Broadcast
Audience Research Council (BARC). This tripartite body is a joint entity comprising
broadcasters, advertisers and advertising agencies, owned in a 60/20/20 ratio, though its
funding ratio is still disputed. Selection of ratings suppliers and ancillary services will in future
be a BARC responsibility. However, as of this writing BARC is not yet operational, pending
ratification of its articles of association, partly because of money wrangles between its
constituent members.
Now broadcast interests have called on the government to intervene, to conduct a third party
audit to evaluate the current ratings system, and to suspend the TAM service indefinitely while
the matter is investigated and resolved. A council set up by India’s Information and
Broadcasting Ministry has responded by calling for TAM to be replaced by an alternative
service.
It seems to EMM that, at virtually every level, all this has more to do with grand-standing than
problem-solving. Those responsible for the smooth running of a vast national TV advertising
market have chosen a dangerous and potentially damaging course of action. Accusing the
official ratings supplier of lying can certainly draw attention to a grievance, but it can only
debase the currency on which the buying and selling of TV airtime depends. Upholding such
accusations without the benefit of proven facts can only aggravate that danger.
As a leading international media management consultancy, EMM has many years’ international
experience of TV audience ratings disputes, and offers the following advice to the warring
factions, as a way out of an ugly confrontation and its potentially destructive consequences.
TV ratings are a basic currency of advertising buying and selling, and throughout the world they
are mostly supplied by an industry-nominated monopoly. The provision of ratings is somewhat
1
similar to the functioning of a stock market, of which most countries have only one. If there
were two competing stock exchanges, and traders could pick and choose the valuation of a
company’s worth, the result would be chaos and a loss of confidence in market values.
For the same reason, TV ratings provision is one rare business in which a monopoly supplier is
not only allowed, but actively mandated by the ad industry in most countries. Self-evidently,
such a monopoly can be highly lucrative, and should not be given away lightly. Nor should its
licence be renewed without periodic scrutiny of the supplier’s performance, a watching brief on
methodology, and every so often a review of alternative suppliers.
However, it seems to EMM that abandoning overnight a long-standing system when there is no
reliable alternative in place is a recipe for disaster. A TV advertising industry without trusted
ratings from a professional source is a ship without a rudder. Furthermore, setting up a new
ratings system with new panels is a major undertaking, vastly expensive and time-consuming,
and prone to protracted teething problems. It is not to be approached in a heated moment.
International Protocol on the same Issues
There have been a number of cases internationally in which disgruntled TV stations tried to
“shoot the messenger” and repudiate the official ratings supplier. They rarely worked out the
way the aggrieved broadcasters imagined. The law of unintended consequences generally
applies:
1. Early disputes over the accuracy of rival rating systems in the UK were eventually
resolved by the creation of a JIC, a joint-industry committee comprising representatives
of broadcast companies, advertisers and advertising agencies. The committee set up
BARB, the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, which in its turn awards and
supervises TV audience measurement contracts. This system is still regarded as a
worldwide industry gold-standard. The Indian equivalent to BARB is BARC.
2. In the USA in the 1990s, the TV ratings monopoly supplier AC Nielsen was coming
under fire from national TV networks, for alleged discrepancies in the way it reported
audiences. The British ratings company AGB mounted a long, expensive and bitter
battle to unseat and replace Nielsen in the USA. The end result was that Nielsen
overhauled its systems and retained its monopoly position, while AGB lost its investment
and retired from the battlefield defeated.
3. In Colombia recently, the TV ratings monopoly-holder IBOPE was denounced by
terrestrial TV broadcasters for allegedly mis-reporting their audience size. A boycott of
IBOPE was mounted, and a group of broadcasters threatened to replace its service with
their own new system. That effort collapsed after about a year, when it was realized that
cost and logistics would prevent the alternative service from being viable.
International experience is worth keeping in mind when national disputes erupt. India would do
well to emulate the system pioneered by BARB in the UK, and avoid the problems that occurred
in the USA and Colombia.
EMM’s Prescription for solving the Problem
1. The issue should be dealt with by Indian trade bodies in India itself, avoiding
unnecessary cost and delay in the courts (especially foreign courts), but with the benefit
of precedent and experience in other markets.
2. All participants to the dispute should consider carefully whether litigation is the correct
avenue for seeking solutions.
2
3. Public accusations of lying and bad faith tend to lower the debate and debase the
currency. It would be better for all parties to draw back from the current finger-pointing,
and hammer out their differences equitably through an expert-driven debate on samples,
methodology etc.
4. A Joint-Industry Committee (JIC) like BARC needs to be fully constituted to oversee TV
ratings supply in its entirety. Its deliberations should cover not only today’s TV audience
measurement requirements, but tomorrow’s too. This will be particularly important in
terms of emerging demography, TV service fragmentation and proliferation, and
technical advances.
5. Once constituted, BARC should mandate that TAM’s methodology should be validated,
and a representative sample of TAM ratings reports examined by independent experts.
Though ‘doctoring’ average audience deliveries might be relatively easy, it is in fact
fiendishly difficult to manipulate all the details of a weekly viewing record so as to give a
falsified overall result. If such trickery has indeed been perpetrated, expert eyes will
detect it.
6. TAM’s new proposals for improving their system deserve serious examination by a
competent committee of experts, as well as the parties concerned. If agreed, they should
be implemented as soon as possible. The idea of suspending the TAM service,
however, would leave the market without a currency to operate by, which could quickly
inflict serious commercial damage on India’s ad industry. TAM should continue to
operate in the interim period.
7. Serious tenders from alternative suppliers should in due course be invited, under a
disciplined system to be agreed by BARC. However, it has to be said that setting up a
new service with a new panel, equipment, processing and administration is an immense
undertaking, not to be undertaken lightly or for short-term reasons. Anyone attempting it
should be clear about the money and time required. As an example of the potential
pitfalls, new ratings panel members’ viewing records are often considered unusable for
the first few months, since one early effect of living under the research microscope can
be to distort reported viewing patterns; viewers who normally watch variety shows may
temporarily switch to highbrow or religious programming to impress the researchers.
8. As a preliminary step, BARC should consider instituting an Establishment Survey of
Indian television audiences. This is an interim procedure that defines the TV universe,
sets the size and composition of the national sample required, dictates panel recruitment
procedures and timelines, and mandates durable quality controls. To ensure the
necessary checks and balances, BARC should assign this task to a different research
organization from the one(s) which will eventually be candidates for gathering and
propagating the viewing data itself.
9. Ratings-service funding issues should be dealt with separately from the controversies
over supplier choice, trust and methodology. The industry should continue to aim for a
tripartite funding system. Broadcasters should probably shoulder the main financial
burden, as they do now in India and in other countries; they plainly need a selling
currency to continue in business. But if advertisers and their agencies dodge all
financial commitment, they risk ending up isolated and voiceless. Only joint funding
preserves a tripartite voice over time, and helps to keep the system honest. It would be
a pity to abandon it.
10. Finally, a solution based on the above obviates government intervention.
3
In summary
There can only be one national TV ratings supplier. It needs the support of all branches of the
industry, it should be answerable to a permanent Joint-Industry Committee comprising
broadcast companies, advertisers and agencies, and it should ideally be jointly funded by those
three parties.
As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late US senator and onetime ambassador to India once said,
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Those wise words seem
particularly relevant to this dispute.
For further information contact:
Stephen White
EMM India
Corporate Office:
502 Advent Atria, Opp. Kingston Tower, Chincholi Bunder Road, Malad (West), Mumbai-64,
India
+91 22 6710 8800
EMM International HQ:
4 Cinnamon Row, London, SW11 3TW, United Kingdom
+44 20 7801 1380
www.emminternational.com
4