I&B finds alternative to TAM

The I&B Ministry is planning to generate real-time data on what the TV viewing households are watching by putting a chip into the set top boxes (STB). The move comes at a time when dominant television ratings company, TAM Media Research, is facing the heat from the Competition Commission of India (CCI). This will be applicable to only Digital Cable homes and DTH and will not include already completed Phase I & II.

The move may also raise privacy concerns and invite protests from rights activists but ministry officials say only such a system can counter allegations about the existing methodology of calculating Television Rating Points (TRPs).

In the third phase, all municipal towns will shift to digital signals and in the last phase the entire country will be covered. The STBs will come fitted with the chip in cities that will be covered under the third and fourth phase.

Ministry sources have revealed that, "The chip will cost about Rs 15. Ministry would bring a regulation that would make it imperative for MSOs and DTH operators to use it and record the data, which has to be handed over to appropriate authority.”

The ministry is trying to build stakeholder consensus for a Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) who will be the custodian of data and channels can access it if they want.

Some initial meeting on BARC were held but not all channels want to move on from TAM. TV viewership data by TAM has been drawing flak on issues such as its limited coverage and even manipulation. 

In its recent petition to CCI, Prasar Bharti had accused TAM of generating data that did not cover rural households and, therefore, did not reflect the reach of its terrestrial network. TAM has to reply to the CCI notice by July 18.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/national-news/item/2775-i-b-finds-alternative-to-tam.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/national-news/item/2775-i-b-finds-alternative-to-tam.html