CCI acts on Prasar Bharati's complaint against TAM; launches probe

Acting on the complaint against TAM Media Research for unfair and biased reporting of TV viewership ratings data by Prasar Bharati, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has now sought relevant data from all the broadcasters. CCI has asked all the broadcasters to provide inputs as to how TAM ratings have adversely impacted their businesses in terms of revenue loss, reputation or otherwise. The broadcasters have to file their replies by July 18.

It may be recalled that on a complaint file by Doordarshan (DD), the Competition Commission of India (CCI) in a significant judgment had ruled that TAM Media Research (TAM) has abused its position of strength with respect to measurement of viewership in contravention of the provisions of section 4 of the Act. It had further said that TAM which is the dominant and the only viewership measurement firm in India had caused irreparable advertising loss to DD by omitting it from viewership TRPs. CCI found enough evidence to refer the matter to the Director General (DG) for further investigation under section 26(I) of the Act. Now CCI will conduct deeper investigation and fix responsibility on persons who took decisions that violated provisions of Competition Act.

The watchdog has asked stakeholders to tender information on their business model, source of revenues, market share as per television audience, comments on whether TAM has abused its dominant position and created any entry barriers in the market. TAM is a joint venture between Nielsen and Kantar Market Research. It is owned by global advertising and marketing services provider WPP, which owns over 60 advertising and PR agencies in India, including GroupM, IPAN, Madhouse, Dentsu and Fitch. All 60 media buying firms control over 60 per cent of the market and are a part of TAM. They are supporting TAM because of the cross-holding. It is a big cartel indeed and the fact is that there is no other alternative. We need more rating agencies and a regulator. Naturally a situation has so developed where TAM supported by the parent and its subsidiary agencies continues to do what it does, unmindful of broadcasters (its clients) concerns. It functions like a cartel and maybe having an unfair advantage.

CCI has asked the broadcasters to note down any instances of TAM denying market access to its competitors. The respondents have also been asked to provide details of entry barriers in the television measurement market like regulatory barrier, cost and technical barriers and economies of scale; and whether they believe that barriers are created by TAM.

DD in its complaint had said that TAM by virtue of its 8000 people meters installed in urban areas has failed to capture what the rural viewers’ watch, the kind of programmes they prefer as different from urban viewers. As such the urban sample size of urban viewers is not reflective of 120 million television households and is very small. In its ruling CCI had said that TAM has ignored and excluded rural viewership by virtue of which DD was also left out as far as its TRPs goes. This means that only 30 per cent which constitutes urban viewership had been taken into account by TAM and 70 per cent which is the rural viewership catered by DD had been ignored. In fact taking this rational into account, people meters should have been installed accordingly.

This approach of TAM had adversely affected DD’s advertising revenues and may have also led to advertisers and consumers getting a wrong viewership picture. By ignoring rural viewership and not installing meters in rural areas, CCI said that TAM had misused technology to the detriment of DD. DD is the only channel with deep rural penetration and caters to the rural tastes with programmes that reflect rural culture, folk culture, agricultural inputs etc.

In the television industry, where about more than 30 per cent of the revenues come from advertisements, advertisers bank on TAM ratings in form of TRP/TVR. The data is collected using the electronic gadget ‘people meter’ connected to TV sets in sample households in regions with over one lakh population. It remains to be seen how the broadcasters respond to CCI and  what happens next. Keep watching this space for more updates.