Broadcasters - TAM ROW ends with kiss and make up!

Call it an amicable solution or call it business compulsions of the stakeholders involved, there seems to be some respite in the long-drawn out battle between the big broadcasters and TAM Media Research over inadequate & faulty rating methodology. After long negotiations on the issue, TAM has decided to move from weekly reporting of television viewership ratings to monthly reporting for large network broadcasters as well a well as for three news channels. Large Network Broadcasters had grouse that weekly rating data apart from being unrepresentative of the universe were much to erratic. This had led to big Network Broadcasters unsubscribing TAM data, the group included Times Television, Viacom18, Network18, STAR , MSM, NDTV, Prism (Eenadu), BAG Networks and Zee. Now as per a settlement, TAM will release monthly ratings from August 1. The monthly data is applicable to four large Network Broadcasters and three news channels.The figures will be released in the first week of each month for the month gone by.

Said a TAM spokesperson on the development, “TAM, purely as an act of professionalism, is fulfilling and respecting its contractual duties and obligations that it is bound by, with the individual Broadcaster clients. This decision is basis individual client letter requests received by TAM from only specific few TV Channels. Data for all other TV Channels will be reported as earlier.”

Further in a major departure from the past, TAM will report viewership date in absolute numbers and not as a percentage of the total targeted audience. This is to reflect the growing viewership data which the current system fails to do so.

While the new reporting methodology will satisfy the big broadcasters for the time being until a rating system under BARC comes into play. Its difficult to aniticipate how this move may work on the Advertisers and the 

Advertising agencies . Presumably it will leave them fuming on the issue. Both the AAAI (Advertising Agencies Association of India) and the ISA (Indian Society of Advertisers have opposed the monthly reporting and reporting in thousands of viewers as opposed to channel share. Advertisers may now be compelled to give more importance to CPT (cost per thousand) as against the present practice of CPRP (Cost per rating point) for decision making.

Speaking to Adgully, Sam Balsara, Chairman & Managing Director said, “Advertisers are unwilling to take this unilateral decision of broadcasters lying down.”

Said Ashish Bhasin, The Chairman India & CEO South East Asia, Aegis Group said, “This seems to be a retrograde step. All the constituents need to get together and resolve this. The step seem to be ad-hoc and one needs to assess the whole situation and take decision. So people technologically capable of assessing the situation should come together and evaluate this. Internationally there is an overnight rating system and in India still we are talking monthly. Hence seems we are going retrograde. Clients should stop advertising eventually. It is not in their best interests.”

 Sanjay Tripathy, Executive Vice President,  Head Marketing, Products and Direct Channels at HDFC Life, “There should be an acceptable and reliable currency to plan and buy media in the long run. All stakeholders should urgently 

form a working group and come up with a fast solution to this contentious issue as prolonging it will serve nobody's purpose.”

Several Advertising professionals and Brand custodians on conditioin of anonymity expressed their displeasure on TAM’s move to provide monthly data. Most felt its a knee jerk reactioin and may not be a decisioin which will last long and may be reversed too. Several senior media professioinals felt that Broadcasters are arm twisting and They feel that this is unacceptable and they will wait and watch how the situation evolves further. Keep watching this space for more.