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The Mighty Fail The Real Eye Test

Admen revise the rules as a special instrument to track viewership finds 'popular' shows aren't really so...

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The Mighty Fail The Real Eye Test
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When India's market research industry decided to change the method of monitoring television viewership, a lot changed. Including the ratings of almost all television programmes. Many of the mighty have fallen. And fallen hard.

Take a look at these figures. Before the new peoplemeter method came into force, TVS Sa Re Ga Ma on Zee TV boasted an all-India viewership of 25.7 per cent. Today, the figure is 2.9 per cent, an 88 per cent drop. Jai Hanuman, the most popular serial on Doordarshan, had a viewership figure of more than 40 per cent in June 1998. In the week ending November 28, the figure was 14.8 per cent. The supposedly hugely popular Close-Up Antakshari was apparently seen by 26.2 per cent of viewers in June. Now, only 4.7 per cent see it.
What's going on?
Traditionally, TV viewership data was collected through the diary method. The market research agency would get people to maintain a diary of their viewing. Every week, the agency would collect the data and ask the respondents if they had watched the programme for at least five minutes. If the respondent said yes, that would rate as viewership. The problems with this method were obvious: one, you had no way to check if the respondent had indeed watched the programme for more than five minutes, and two, by definition, anyone who watched any programme for only five minutes was assumed to have seen the full programme. Thus, advertisers could never really know that their ads were actually being watched.

Today, this method has been replaced by peoplemeters, introduced by both org-Marg for its Indian National TV Audience Measurement (intam) and imrb-Nielsen for its newly started TV Audience Measurement (tam). This is a small instrument attached to the TV. Any viewer who wants to channel surf uses a special tuner and the peoplemeter records the time when it's done. So the research agency knows exactly how long the viewer has watched a programme.

In fact, the data collected now goes even beyond that. For example, if somebody switches from Zee to Sony at 10 pm, the agency can record the exact picture that moment on Zee and the new picture on Sony. Every week, the agency downloads the coded data in palmtop computers and decodes it. And by studying the patterns, the advertiser can know exactly at what point in a serial, he can have maximum viewership for his advertisement.

If the data shows that most viewers tune out of a news programme after the headlines, the advertiser must advertise right at the beginning. Says Gopinath Menon, executive director, tbwa Anthem: Bulk of media planning today is done through analysing gross rating points (grp) that help you evaluate the total noise level each ad campaign gets on a channel.

With this scientific tracking method, what is clear is that the audience is increasingly getting fragmented and priorities are shifting. Agencies are being able to track viewers of different ages and economic classes far more closely. In news and current affairs, the theory goes that news as a segment has registered impressive growth over the last one year. It could be wrong. In the top 50 satellite TV programmes among Indian women aged 15 years or more (a key target for many advertisers), there was only one news programme in the week ended November 22: the late-night Zee News.

In the Socio-Economic Classes A and B (standard classification for the two broad upper-income and educated Indians), many more men above the age of 25 (another segment very high on advertisers' wish list) watch the Hindi news programme Aaj Tak than the 9 pm Star News. In fact, Subah Aaj Tak, which comes on DD2 at 7.15 am is seen by more than twice the number of men who tune in to Star News at prime time 9 pm.

It's just niche advertising with limited viewership for news, argues Menon. Not more than 10 per cent of the total estimated ad revenues of Rs 2,200 crore of the programming budget is reserved for news. In India, target-specific channels are feeling the crunch. It's not easy to build up ad revenues. News is no longer time-specific, and a person has a chance to catch up with the news 24 hours. This has caused tremendous fragmentation in viewership. Hence, the gradual split of ad revenues, says Sajal Mukherjee, vice-president (media), Rediffusion dy&r. Adds Mukherjee: Today's data reveals a whole lot of shift from news to entertainment. People are preferring short capsules of news that tell you all.

Agrees Santosh Desai, senior executive vice-president (strategic planning and consumer insight), McCann Erickson: There are genuine reasons for such splits in viewership patterns. Current research by imrb and org-Marg shows that barring a handful of programmes, the channels are somewhat losing their newness. This is more in news and current affairs as also in serials. Both channels and advertisers have accepted that the Mahabharata days of 80-90 per cent viewership are gone for good.

Today, if a programme gets a 15 per cent viewership, it's considered phenomenal. Advertisers are concentrating more on the viewership figures of their own target audiences. Though Zee TV's Amaanat has only 4.7 per cent all-India viewership, it is watched by 22.4 per cent of women aged 15 or more. Again, it would have been logical to assume that this segment enjoys countdown shows a lot. But, in the top 50 satellite programmes in the week reviewed, there was only one countdown show, Colgate Top 10. That too clocked in at only 16th, with 9.2 per cent viewership.

In the end, what is emerging is lots and lots of segments for all age groups, which makes things easy for the agency to make its own assessment, and that's why you see this slow shift for more entertainment, family programmes on channels which are bigtime money spinners, says Sanjay Chakravarty, associate vice-president and media services director, hta. For example, he adds, today's data shows that Star News is best at 9 pm, because it's a prime time viewership. That programme is generating some revenue. But if you see the rest of the news on the 24-hour Star News channel, you will realise that a whole lot of it is repackaged because otherwise, it needs a tremendous amount of investment. That would mean a high ad rate, which advertisers would not accept.

Sums up Ambika Srivastava, senior vice-president (media services), McCann Erickson: Channels are being forced to reshape their strategies. And a lot of assumptions are suddenly being questioned.

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