 Welcome friends, it's delightful to have all of you here this afternoon on a very important discussion and I'm so happy that such wonderful friends from all over the country have joined here and really pleased that this effort has been appreciated and so what I'll do is I'll carry on the presentation for another 40-45 minutes and without any ado I'll start the presentation and while the presentation is on you can if need be put in questions on the chat box I'll try and address that. So this is TRP is the Indian story so it's more of a historical account and I'll be touching upon some of the points of contention here something that has been discussed in the media and in other platforms for a long time. So for a long time exactly because for the last 12 years we've been having a lot of discussions so it's important that we have an overview of that on this kind of a platform. So I'll just try and share my screen in a moment's time so as I said while I'm presenting I'm not able to see the other screen so if there's anything goes wrong please let me know so I'll just come back to that. This is about the television rating points the Indian story. I start off with the television revenue models at first and this is basically for students a lot of old-timers will recall this model but it's important that in today's discussion we have an overview of this as well. So when television started basically there was this system which was followed by a lot of public service broadcasters Durdarshan used to do that the British broadcasting corporation used to do that. So what happened was that the broadcasters like Durdarshan and others they would sell time slots to various content producers and if you recall there weren't too many channels at that point of time there was Durdarshan in India and later on they had another metro channel and some other channels so that particular channel would sell different time slots to various content producers say for example a 30 minute programming they would divide into 30 minutes of a particular serial or a particular slot would be divided into 22 minutes of programming and 8 minutes of advertising so whoever is buying that slot that person or that entity gets about 5 to 6 free minutes of 5 to 6 minutes of free commercial time so it's their job to get commercials for the slot that they have bought. So for them the challenge was to make the program so interesting that advertisers would come and advertise on their particular platform. As you can understand the competition at that point of time was amongst various programs and I'm sure you understand about the primetime concept so there was a prime time and the slot was the most in-demand thing so somebody who knew the important people or somebody who could access the prime slot they were I mean guaranteed very good advertisement money because that was the time when people were you know most you know people were most likely to not just watch programs but also you know those people were the ones that the advertisers would be interested in so it went on like that for quite some time so the broadcaster itself would get 2 to 3 minutes of free commercial time so if Durdarshan wanted to give out some public utility message or even if it wanted to give out advertisements it would do that for example. So the idea was very simple putting out programs and then making it popular so that they could get advertisers and those advertisers would be paying based on the perceived popularity of the program so that popularity was measured according to different indicators. Now later on you know we went on to another scheme but this is in this particular scheme the broadcaster was guaranteed income so I mean the broadcaster had nothing to worry about it could just you know sell the slot to the highest bidder generally of course there were limitations on what a particular content provider could show for example they couldn't show anything which was against the law they couldn't show anything which which went against the interests of the country so on and so forth so besides all these things the content provider could broadcast any kind of a thing that were of course you know a lot of do's and don'ts about content providers but I'm not getting into that the point is that the broadcaster was guaranteed a revenue in this particular scheme the risk was borne by the content producer so the content producer who bought that particular slot for example had to get in advertisements so they had there was a different scheme altogether later on which you know we had another scheme it was mainly followed by the GECs the general entertainment channels in this model the channels themselves buy out the content so they would be buying the content from the content producer so whoever is a software producer they will say okay I'll buy this from you say for example four lakh per episode the content producer or the content provider had to guarantee a particular viewership and it would say that okay I'm guaranteeing you five TRPs I mean we'll come to the definition and all that in a moment's time say for example here just see this as a popularity index so the content producer would guarantee and this was all in pen and paper this was all in black and white and based on that the channel would be paying them some money at per episode rate and here the the onus was on the broadcaster to get as much advertisements as they could based on you know the TRP guaranteed by the producer and based on you know there are other methods of promoting the program so this was a another very distinct direction in which the television revenue model went off the first one the broadcaster was guaranteed certain amount of money but there was a limit they couldn't go beyond that here I mean it was limitless the broadcaster could I mean earn as much as they wanted to you know based on on the popularity of the program and yet there was no limit on advertisements etc I mean there was anything the channel producer could do as long as they could get the audience as long as they could get the you know viewership and that is where you know things started changing or that is what became important from then on now this was again you know there are lots and lots of calculations that I don't want to get into all of these details it's beautifully put across in that series of books Indian media business by Vanita Kohli Khandekar so I mean if anyone wants to know more details about that for example if a particular channel had guaranteed if a particular content producer had guaranteed a particular TRP and they could not get that then probably their per episode money would come down also the channel would be you know making the advertisers happier by broadcasting more of the advertisement say for example the channel had told the advertisers that okay I'm going to get five TRPs here so and the TRP went on to four then in that same you know percentage they would be increasing the time that they would give those advertisers for example earlier they would be giving them 10 minutes for example these are all just you know figures I'm picking out of thin air if they had guaranteed 10 now since the TRP is less they have to show more advertisements so there was a time when there was lots of advertisements on channel but that did not mean they were getting more money it's because their TRPs had gone down so they had to make the advertisers happy and they would be showing the same advertisement for for more number of times based on the TRP so TRP is as you can understand right from beginning and especially in this kind of a scenario became a very important indicator for making money for a very important indicator even for sustainability we'll come back to more of this this is the figure I got from Statistica two days back so it's there on the net this talks about the television advertisement spend so the money that we are running after in television industry is 27 000 crores in 2020 according to Statistica in 2014 for example it was about 14 000 crores so it's almost doubled in these last six years we can see that the amount of money spent on advertisements on television advertisements is growing at a rapid rate and that is why the television industry and some yardstick to measure the popularity of channels has become so important because they are dealing with this kind of money if you open the BARC website they will be talking about television as a 33 000 crore industry so they are looking at other other revenue cases as well including the subscription revenue and all so here we are talking of 27 000 crore advertisement spend on television so there is no mismatch between what you see on the BARC site which is about the total revenue that or the total amount the total worth of the television industry and this is just about advertisements the commercial audience measurement began in the mid 90s and there were two competitors and I will talk about those competitors in a moment's time so we had the TAM which was basically a Nielsen Cantor company and there was the Intam which was an ORG Marga company and in the mid 90s there was a very funny situation where you know the Intam would come out with very different figures from TAM so based on what measurement or which company you were following you could say that one particular channel was doing better than the other channel so in one series of measurements they would show channel A as being the leader in another series of measurements they would be showing channel B as the leader and that was again you know a problem not for the viewers but more for the advertisers before that Durdarshan used to have you know panel diaries I will be talking about panel diaries in a moment's time again so TAM provided this ratings data once a week so that would be every so that these were weekly data in 2005 a MAP and other independent enterprises they entered into the competition and they launched a national people meter panel and this is this one this was what you know was happening elsewhere in the world as well so a national people meter panel that delivered overnight ratings so you could know about the popularity of a program or a channel overnight you didn't have to wait for a week in in the panel diaries system that I'll just talk about in a moment there they had to wait for almost a month so when you were seeing people's diaries it was from the earlier month so that is where you know things started changing so the problem with AMAP was that the joint industry body of the broadcasters and the advertisers and even the software producers refused to endorse AMAP and they continue to recognize the TAM ratings as they say the word is the advertising currency I'll talk about why they use the currency word so basically what it meant was that initially you had the dark the Durdarshan audience rating system it was started with the panel diary system and and it began in 1989 so panel diary was like a diary which was given to those sampled homes and they just had to write from memory about you know who had watched what you know which channel for what time so on and so forth and I'm sure you can realize you know that this was far from accurate I mean this was based on people's memories and you know whatever I mean I'm sure we understand that when we have to write a diary you know so whatever comes to your mind we just put in some figure but since it was based on it was only about Durdarshan it was only about Durdarshan's audiences because as you remember you know I've just spoken about the Durdarshan's program so they were wanting to find out which programs were most popular on Durdarshan and that was again for those free commercial timings etc and also to realize what were the audience tastes then so this panel diary system went on for quite some time then you know we had the Indian national television audience measurement this was established by ORG mark in 1994 and four years later the TAM media research was formed in 1998 so from 1998 till the time they merged they were having very divergent figures for the same channel and this is very funny because you know if you're doing you know something very robustly then you should get the same thing I mean why should you get the variability that in you know in in in one kind of polls you're showing one party is winning another kind of poll you're showing the other party is winning when you're dealing with the same universe when you're dealing with the same population so that was quite a funny situation but as you can understand there's a lot of that there was there was a lot of money involved even that point of time the merger was announced between TAM and in time and that's when you know the industry people were able to convince TAM and in time that you know we want one single currency by which we can measure you know the popularity etc so that you know the the revenue structure and the advertising structure and all that would be a lot more simplified so they went for one national agency and that's how you know it began in 2000 and one as I just said in my earlier slide so this this this is about one bit of history about TAM and in time being merged into one entity and people meters being introduced I'll go back to these people meters in a moment's time so what it actually means so let's come back again you know to the present time before we go back again and you know try and find out what was happening and what can be changed so anyone who watches television for more than a minute is considered a viewer so say for example you're watching IPL and you're getting that strategic time out for two and a half minutes or whatever and I guess it's two and a half minutes so for that two and a half minutes if you go and you know just watch any you know a television channel or noise channel or non-noise channel or whatever you will be considered a viewer of that particular channel and another very important point and this is what the industry says and on the face of it this seems true but we'll see that you know there's more to it than meets the eye that the television rating point is important for the advertising agencies and the marketers and it's important for advertising agencies to determine you know which channel has what viewership not only the quantity but also the quality of that viewership we'll be talking about that quality of viewership in a moment's time it's not just about how many people are watching program but who are those people and that's a very important distinction whenever we're talking about these television rating points and we're talking about these marketing agencies in India for example at the moment and there has been so much you know talk about across the media in the last week or so that you know this figure is something that you know stuck on with everybody and we all know by now that the Broadcast Audience Research Council using the barometers they call them the barometers the people meter that they use they are known as barometers they're installed in 44,000 households across the country household that's a very important term here and another thing that they're doing is they are embedding audio watermarks in video content so this is something that we can't hear but this can be detected by the decoders on the barometers using dedicated hardware and software using customized software that they have for that so if somebody is skimming through the channel and you know waits at a particular channel for a minute or so so he will be viewed a viewer so now you can understand you know why all the drama that you know we see on all of the television channels is to just hold them on for at least one minute okay one minute means additional viewership so at times you know we can put it as crudely as that but we'll come to you know the layered construct of all this the selection of households where the barometers are installed is a two-way process is a two-stage process the first step is the establishment survey so they have a large face-to-face survey of a sample of approximately three lakh households from the target population so a three lakh household again is you know based on the various parameters of you know of demographics of income of language of you know all the characteristics of the population have to be you know met in this kind of a sample and beyond that there are other social socioeconomic classifications which I will you know demonstrate in a moment's time so those 44,000 are selected from these three lakh households which the bar says are randomly selected will we are just putting on this on record before we get on to a discussion on this so this is what they do they have a sampling design they have an introduction design they do this data quality correction and finally they have the end end users for themselves so we've just spoken about that this is from the bark side so just to so basically when they are doing the TV universe estimation that's again an estimation that they have to make so they periodically consider this research maybe once or two you know twice sorry once a year or maybe once in two years to ascertain the TV universe so how many people are watching television and they're viewing habits and all so the survey that we are going to talk about right now is from November 2017 to March 2018 over this five month period and they covered those three lakh homes in four thousand three hundred towns and villages and there is a 68 percent urban coverage so this this is about you know they use the electoral role sampling to select the households randomly so you know as far as statistics is concerned and you must be knowing I don't want to get into more details about all this so in 2018 for example in the survey that we've just spoken about they found out there were 19.7 crore households which were you know had television connection so it's a 7.5 percent increase from 2016 and the number of individuals is from 78 crores to 83.6 crores so an estimated 83.6 crore you know individuals living in 19.7 you know crore television homes they watch television so in effect every household 4.2 persons you know watch television and you know there are questions about you know who is watching in which household I will come about that in a moment's time so again you know using the census figure and the IRS figure and the you know broadcast India survey this is what what they say that you know there's been a 7.5 percent increase in the television home and there is a 4.2 percent increase in the total you know this is this is the total households so this is the estimation of the total households and out of that this is the number of television homes so that is 66 percent coverage so there are 34 percent households which do not have a television set they are into 12 categories so this will be 44 this is wrong this will be 44000 so they are the new households the households that we just spoke about the 19.7 crore households they are classified into 12 categories under the new consumer classification system so this is the new socioeconomic classification system adopted by bark in 2015 earlier it used to be the sec now they say it's the new consumer classification system so how do they get this new consumer classification system it's based on the education level of the main wage earner and the ownership of they have 11 items there so how many items out of those 11 items does the household own so it's based on these two factors so based on a lot of statistical data they get into this new consumer classification system so this might appear very small if you're using a well said but I'll just try and explain what it means I'm trying to show you the difference between the new consumer classification system and the older socioeconomic classification system so why do they need these classifications because advertisers are interested in finding out who are the people watching that particular program if the particular who is what if the particular household who's watching the program has money to spend and they have a desire to spend that money on the goods and services which are advertised on television then they are the ones whom the advertisers are advertisers are interested in otherwise somebody if you see the classification here is e3 they have this this is about the number of durables owned so this is none and this one is 9 plus so out of those things you know starting from if you just see this I mean I haven't written down all but they are all available so starting from an electrical connection to you know a four wheeler there are 11 items so if if somebody has only one and you know his illiterate and he falls in the e2 nccs classification if somebody who's a graduate or a post graduate or a professional and has more than nine items on that particular classification list then he is a one he doesn't need to be a graduate if he's just even if he's not a professional he's just you know a graduate or a post graduate and he has more than you know these nine plus items then he is regarded as an a one you know a consumer somebody who's having you know just some college or or a diploma but who's not a graduate and who has more than nine of those items on that list then he's an a2 category so we have categories starting from a1 to e3 so out of that 44,000 this 44,000 figure it might appear big but generally people the advertisers they're trying to reach out to these a1 a2 a3 category of people so as you can understand that if you can you know mod modulate or you you know you can pilferage or you can you know kind of manipulate these categories of people to watch your program by by some means then you will be getting more money than just you know simply asking more people to watch so 44,000 is the total sample but out of that if say for example I'm just talking about Maharashtra for example then that would be 4,000 or if I'm talking about some you know place in Maharashtra then it would be just 400 panel homes so that would be much easier to manipulate if somebody wants to manipulate that I'll come to details of that in in in another slide in a moment's time so it's important to understand that this system is based on a classification system where the advertisers are informed about who are the people who are watching your program it has always been there but now this is you know a lot more you know clearer in terms of education and in terms of the durables you had the earlier system had other classification it had different classifications for urban and rural India it was linked to individuals it was static it was it didn't change over time so this is as you can understand the NCCS is is dynamic so say for example somebody didn't have a car today he buys a car tomorrow he'll be into into the A1 category so this is something you know which is a dynamic and it can you know change over so it captures the affordability quotient of the household this is from S. Y. Qureshi's article in Outlook and lots of people have you know quoted that earlier so I just wanted to show what he was suggesting so he said that you know connecting the meter involved removing the back cover of the TV and soldering two wires from the meter into the tuner of the television so that people meter you know the wire was soldered there and the data card was collected twice a week by a worker from AC Niels and this is how Tam worked the setup box had a remote which had a button assigned for everybody say for example the if the head of the family is watching there's a button for him so the people meter would recall a record that okay the head of the family is watching so when he starts watching that he had to put the button on when he's leaving that he had to put the button off if four people were watching that whoever had put the button on and off you know it would record in his or her name so if you have to if you take the average of 4.2 people so any of them could be you know switching on any of them could be so that is why they have gone for household now they're not going going for individuals now because you know it was to take care of the problems of which individual is watching it this bar has been promoted by the Indian Broadcasting Foundation and the Indian Society of Advertisers and the Advertising Agency Association of India based on a 60-2020 formula this was after you know Nils you know there were a lot of complaints against Tam you know by Nils and Cantor not just Indian it was there in abroad as well and in 2012 we know there was a case filed against Tam by NDTV and it was filed in New York and it was very well talked about in 2008 the government started taking it very seriously and that's when you know a gentleman from West Wingall the late Praerangan Das Moonshi he was the Information and Broadcasting Minister and you know it was started the government started acting on that from 2008 because before that you know there was nothing about Doordarshan on the Tam ratings I mean lot of people would say that okay we watched Doordarshan but it was not there it was not there on any of those channels because as you know the advertisers were more interested about you know the private channels which were coming up then and again there are a lot of other issues that if you remember I mean it was all about based on on the political might you might have at that point of time so any channel which was in the top 16 you know which was known as the prime band that was more likely to be watched by people if you want if you had to watch more than you know those 16 channels or 24 channels or whatever you had to have an s-band on your tv and everybody did not have that on their television so anybody who had the cloud with the cable operators or the with the multi system operators or whatever they could very easily manipulate this into you know getting them themselves into the top 16 or whatever so that more and more people could watch it so repeated complaints against all this led on to you know a lot of you know discussions on in government channels as well and people wanted to find out you know how they could you know take take care of that so if there are questions so far you know I would love to add that I'll just go on to I will I will now go to you know various government agencies and how they took on that you know as as it went along so now we are going to come into the real real part of it so the ministry of information and broadcasting it asked the telecom regulatory authority of India to frame policy guidelines for rating agencies and that is when you know time was at its height so try you know it recommended an approach for self-regulation and it was try which had you know spoken of you know setting up an industry led body not you know about a body which was from another agency you know which also had add-ins with them so they had recommended the setting up of bark if you see this carefully so just I'm sorry yeah so I'll just put on this the front page of this telecom regulatory authority of India consultation paper on policy guidelines for television audience measurement television rating point that was in 28th March 2008 so this was one of the first such documents in in public domain this is consultation paper number seven 2008 so I'll very quickly point out what this particular consultation paper in 2008 had pointed out what are the problems that they had flagged them so they said that okay there should be some supervisory or policy framework for the rating agencies the sample size had to be big because at that point of time it was less than 8000 I'll come to the earlier history once again so the sample size they said had to be big and it had to be representative they wanted there to be a lot of technical accreditation in the way people meter etc were used they wanted real-time reports not you know reports which were you know kind of analyzed oblique manipulated whatever later on more transparency their transparency more validation and you know issues of methodology the consultation paper then it believed that this this gave advantage to larger television channels and the viewers likes and dislikes were unaddressed so they were viewing I mean we'll come to this part of you we were engagement again in another slide so their likes and dislikes were unaddressed and there was you know ownership issues so there was monopoly because the same people were in advertising agencies the same people were with broadcast as the same people were with software producers and the same people were doing the rating as well so this is these are you know the basic points about that consultation report all these reports are available on the internet if somebody wants or if you want you now have a copy I can mail it to you whenever you want it later on in 2010 November we had another very important you know consultation committee this was by Vicky and this is known as the review of existing television rating system in India so this was by a very important government body and if you can see this small part closely here it says confidential and privileged it used to be confidential and privileged then but now it's easily available again you know the chairperson of that particular committee was Dr. Amit Mitra he is the Honourable Finance Minister of the Government of West Bengal at the moment we had Rajiv Marhotra, Neerja Choudhury we had all these important names who were part of that TRP committee this is known as the it is popularly known as the Mitra committee as well so what did the Mitra committee recommend in November 2010 first of all it you know it did a very big you know historical study about that so they found out that the time had installed 8000 this this is about if you remember this is about 2010 so at that point of time had just 8150 people meters across India and they were covering 165 towns and about 37,500 individuals so there if you can see that every household had a larger number of people watching television now it has come down to 4.2 another that's a different issue and they even then Tam had this baseline survey which you know Bark is doing at the moment they first select which of the towns and then from the town they split up you know the home selection so this is you know just like those you know two ways sampling process this is what goes on you know first of all you have the establishment survey then you select a sample and then you you know have that says it was a state of the art PVM 5 online people meter something you know where which could be from where you could get the data directly into your processing system and to the client analysis software and they also had an advertising monitor monitoring index there as well the Mitra committee recommendations and some of these recommendations they find a resonance even today so we'll just go very quickly through the Mitra committee recommendations so the committee recommended an increase in sample size at that point of time it was 8150 as you see to 15,000 over a period of two years that means until 2012 and then to 30,000 in 2015 so roughly much of it has been covered but that's a different story so it suggested that the broadcasters the advertisers and advertising agencies pay a certain percentage of their turnovers to bark because you know the cost of expansion of the TRP system is quite expensive and it would take about 660 crore the Mitra committee you know was of that view it recommended that the four stages of the TRP measurement they should be you know all separated they should be separated they should be commissioned to distinct agencies the designing of survey and the quality research then the commissioning and the establishment survey then the data analysis and report generation followed by the audit all these things should be commissioned to distinct agencies so that all the checks and balances are in place at that point of time following that you know there was another you know policy guidelines for television rating agencies in India that was in 2000 and January 2014 that was again by the information and broadcasting ministry so starting from 2008 when the Ministry of Information Broadcasting first took notice of that to November 2010 then in January 2014 there were some other policy guidelines so I have taken these screenshot from the exact report itself just to establish its authenticity so I'm not just making it up the ratings ought to be technology neutral the ratings should capture data across multiple viewing platforms including cable TV including direct to home terrestrial TV online platforms wherever feasible that's a very important thing secrecy and privacy of the panel homes must be maintained in this context the industry body will issue a voluntary code of conduct etc etc and 10% of additional homes beyond the required panel size now as you can understand okay I'll talk about this point in another occasion okay so very recently you know during this lockdown there was another recommendation by try once again this was about the review of television audience measurement and rating system in India this was on 28th April 2020 so this is the latest try regulation about TRP's and you know about the television audience measurement the board should have at least 50% independent members that's very important about you know who is there at the hem of affairs in these rating agencies it should have 50% independent members one of them should be a measurement technology expert another statistician and maybe two representatives from the government or the regulator the regulator could be anything and the board should not be 60 2020 it should be equally you know it should have equal representation from the construct industry associations AAA, ISA, IBF etc they should have equal representation that is what bark thought or bark said very important point here and I want to you know put some more you know stress on this particular slide and this is important I mean because many people believe that you know try should be spending more time on you know or should be spending more of their efforts on you know this kind of you know data because if you remember and I'm sure you know we all know that we are in an age of technology where you know almost whatever we are doing on Google I mean the data to the you know best possible precision is known to everybody and that's what you know surveillance economy is about you know I mean if I'm if I'm watching something on Amazon Amazon for a moment I go back to Facebook I get exactly that advertisement there I mean then Amazon knows when to send me that particular email so that you know I'm coaxed into buying that kind of a product so you know this digital surveillance has gone to an extent where they just do not even know what we are doing but they can even predict what we can do in future so why should this be such a big problem for television for God's sake we all you know you be using digital technology why shouldn't we you know get very simple straightforward data for everyone and that is where you know there are lots and I mean over the last few days you know we've read lots and lots of reports about lots and lots of you know conspiracy theories and so on and so forth but the crux of it means that you know nobody wants to get out of that system I mean why should you go to the people meter system there are there are you know very simple methods of finding out data so why are they not using it and that's because they say that okay this 27 000 crore industry and there's a lot of you know underwriting there are a lot of you know dealing that this is not just limited to India this is what happens across the globe and this is where you know the problem lies you know because even the I mean by law the advertising agencies are mandated not to get more than 1% of the commission which you know say for example if they get any any you know I can't name companies but say company A to advertise on channel B so they would get just 1% commission on that but you know it gets much more than that so lots and lots of agencies lots and lots of you know people are involved there you know who know how to make the system work for the benefit of maximizing their revenue and it's not just about revenue because you know there are other other cases of content involved there as well I'll come on to content in another moment's time but this particular document of the try it just talks about MIB should amend the DTH license and MSO registration so as to mandate STB set of boxes capable of transferring viewership data and adoption of return path data technology that means the set of boxes the majority of the tiny set of boxes that we're using they are do not have the technology to extract data and send it back to the MSO and from there to the audience measurement agency so that is something you know which is again you know put off to somewhere you know deep into the future because they're saying that MIB should amend the DTH license so we don't know when they will amend and when you know that or probably you know another set of set of boxes to come we don't know how this will work out but the problem is that the use of technology is one very simple and effective way to find out that who is doing what and it's not just about you know one one platform because you know we have the OTT platform these days and they're having you know as they say absolutely granular data about who's watching for what and how long and what is the engagement so on and so forth so it's important that it's not just limited to these numbers because as I said say for example if I'm talking of you know television news for example so out of 44,000 homes if we take off say just for example the viewership of you know news channels is 440 so if I get to know that who are these 440 people I can you know do anything about that so 44,000 seems a big number a huge number but if I get to know about just 440 people because TRPs of news channels would be you know in the range of one it won't be much you know the general entertainment channels will be huge so if I can get you know through whatever means and in the age of surveillance it's much easier to find out you know who's having because the sampling system would work only if it's this proper if it if it is robust if they follow that particular thing otherwise you know the sample does not remain a true sample and that's where the problem lies and you know beyond the numbers again I mean if you're looking for that A1 classification that number will be very small so I need just to you know get across maybe 100 people to work it out so say for example if they are looking for maybe a person from that A1 classification in Delhi for example that would be less than 100 television sets and if I can you know manipulate that then I can make crores and crores of rupees and many people say that this is what is happening so this is where you know the problem is and and the point is that the argument is that okay does not matter to the viewer so it does not matter to me that you know who's getting TRPs or whatever but again you know this is this is a very important point to understand I'll come back to that point in another slide so let me talk about this particular slide now so I'm sure we all know the you know point without liars so just that's that's one example I give my students very often say for example we have about 100 people in this audience right now and we will find it and if you try and find out the annual sorry the monthly income the average income of this 100 people say for example that is 1 lakh per month suddenly by whatever means you know if Mark Zuckerberg walks in into this for for for one minute suddenly the average would go on to hundreds of crores you know the average will just from 1 lakh per user would go to 100 crores per user for a moment this is because there is one person who's an outlier there is one person who is you know making the average go in one direction in such a big way so it's very easy statistically to find out what is outliers I mean every even an undergraduate student would know that if it is you know beyond the three standard deviations from the mean then it is an outlier and you can find out what are those outliers so it will be very easy for us to find out that okay if only five channels are you know if only five people meter homes are watching one channel for a longer duration of time it will be very easy to find out you know who they are and and and to correct that so there should be a proper outlier policy as well I'm sure that there's one in place but the problem is that people know how to go beyond how to go across the system so one of these stories that I was reading was that okay this spike does not happen at one go it happens gradually so there they were the same people meter the same people would be watching for one hour and then for two hours and then for three hours so it doesn't show as an outlier so there are a lot of problems with with with with these manual interventions so the tri head said that any type of manual intervention is has to be avoided because wherever there is this human interface at the last mile that there are problems or there can be problems of manipulation and you know these are just some of the things that are out in the open there are many things which are not there and again about the audit and that's very important this had to be this is this is another important recommendation by try about getting this audit conducted by an you know agency to conform with all those things so audit is of course a very important area and also about separating its function if you remember even the mitra commission had spoken about the separation so this is the separation that even the tri report talks about one unit for prescribing methodology the other for for processing the data for water marking and other things and there should be you know absolutely no connection between them and that's very important because if these are separate then a lot of those manipulations can be avoided or there can be those checks and balances again you know increasing their sample from forty four thousand to sixty thousand to one lakh by twenty twenty two because you know if they can get the system working and if the manipulations can be avoided a larger sample would mean that if you can manipulate a very small number of television sets and probably that would not matter but as you've just shown you know that even with a small manipulation and if if the audience is small for that particular nature for that particular classification you can you know have a bigger change so that problem still remains but overall if you have a big sample size that would take care of a lot of problems but again you know as we said you know this is an indicator this is one measurement which are used by advertisers and they're used by you know advertising agencies to determine which channels have what kind of viewership so that they can place their products there for for so that's how the industry works now the problem is that you know there is some element of of this kind of a thing on content as well there is a major influence on content as well and everybody who's been into journalism or into public communication would know that it's a big ask you know finding out you know how how you know what does your audience want I mean this is this is one thing that we always you know strain our minds in we always strain our brains to find out okay what does the audience want what what works what does not work and one thing that you know a lot of journalists are very fond of saying is that okay news is what your competition is saying what the news is so if say for example one channel you know stands up and says something the other would also you know say that okay this is working let's see this let's try this out and probably that's where you know some kind of an agenda setting or some kind of a priming works where you know one channel or one way of working it seemed to be you know the the the popular thing and others others start emulating that and probably then that becomes the you know dominant norm so these are just you know speculations and these have to be you know backed by by you know methodical and systematic studies as well but that's one one very important view that if that is an indicator and that's the only indicator we have like it or not we have that indicator and that's where you know I mean even and at the vernacular level as you can understand it's for about very small number of homes for example if I'm talking about Bengali channels it would be very few hundred homes there so if we can you know find out exactly what they want then probably that could be a good thing but if that manipulation takes over then we don't know what content works with people and that's where you know the bigger channel in July is you know it's and they're all intertwined I mean and that's where any good advertiser would tell you that okay it's very difficult to find out who is your target audience but my target audience is very similar to a target audience of my competitor so if that I can as well try and do that because that means business that means you know and that that's the bottom line so a number of things are involved over here and this has to be you know sorted out so the use of technology is a very important indicator especially the RPD and for some reason you know the set of boxes they say are not you know they're not good enough to send this reverse path data so that's one way of looking at it but you know in the longer run this is how it should be but again that involves a lot of you know privacy concerns it involves a lot of you know concerns of surveillance and it involves a kind of you know a lot of manipulation there as well but that's another thing because you know many people would not want it directly to go there so I'm watching that particular channel I don't want everyone so the one way out of that could be you know and it is how we try also suggest is by making this anonymous so withhold I mean all of us you know educators we know that we know our students from the rule numbers we don't even know who that person so it is something that can be done and this is what tri is saying in 20 on 28th April 2020 so that means you know that there are there are question marks on the anonymity of this so they said that they say that there should be efforts to withhold the identity of channel's name and number etc while collecting so there should be a lot of that encryption in other words and anonymize anonymized viewership data should be transferred electronically so there should be no data from STB to the rating agency directly so through without the explicit consent so this is one another way out of of this imbroglio again an important question so I have put it in a blank term here and that's a very important question that we are having in much of our academic discussions that TRP basically measures exposure you know you're there but does it measure engagement and it's a very important indicator you know how much engagement of the viewer is there I mean if we if we take it as an indicator of the popularity of a particular kind of content as far as the business side is concerned that's okay that's we've dealt with that but what about the viewer and his likes and dislikes so what about his engagement I mean so that has to be there has to be some very proper way of measuring that engagement and it has it shouldn't be something very stark as you know how much you know how many minutes you were watching that and you know which program you were watching in that particular time the engagement has to be measured by more sophisticated means they do exist I mean they are there you know in in most of our academic studies we want to find out you know there are lots of you know ways of triangulation and finding out but it's very important that we realize in our conversations that whether we are dealing with the engagement of the viewership also just exposure will not be enough this is what Vanita Kohli Khandekar you know spoke of about seven or eight years ago that you know in this two trillion rupees business of media and entertainment we need you know regulators of the kind of off-common UK or the FCC in USA so especially in cases where where the government and the corporate bodies cannot be trusted so I'll stop my presentation here and if there are questions I love to answer those questions if anybody has any question I mean you can just switch on your oh yes ma'am yeah thank you so good afternoon sir and this is Sujatha calling from Hyderabad ha ha please tell me ma'am yeah namaskar sir keseyam thank you sir I would like to ask you because we did to the OTT platforms and all cinema halls are going to be released somehow released we hardly we could find any audience in the theatres and all and so definitely the this pandemic I could say that's unblocked pandemic I don't know how it's going to really help the theatres again you know the restaurants and again you know art is a buses and all so when we talk about this like OTT platforms how this going to be helped in digital market because it had to depend on the you know smartphones we had depend on the digital like digital everything digitalization so even now we have a like in then you know in Hyderabad you have a rain so many rains are in Hyderabad right now and we cannot find a proper you know network system is prevailing it's in the city so much disturbance is there right right now just relate to this TR periods you're talking about I mean in relate to the TR periods which is a which is a most leading private company or private may say that digital OTT platform which is leading in the market okay thank you thank you very much for the question because you know this gives me an opportunity to talk about an important point that you know I wanted to speak now so very important to understand about audience stays and very important to understand about this subscription revenue part of it because you know right now if it is so much of you know ad driven then we are probably looking at the lowest common denominator and we're trying to address that and the content is you know to what our competitors are doing or whatever so the quality content about you know viewers is given a miss so let me just give an example a lot of those you know wonderful TLC channels and the discovery channels and you know the national geographic channels and all that they are probably not even there on the TRP list but you know they are doing very well because advertisers know that you know there is a discerning audience there who are you know willing to pay for that and probably you know they are the kind of audience that we are looking for the OTT works because you know they have managed to make the individual you know very important and that's where you know whether you're talking of the Netflix or you know Amazon Prime or you know so many other you know Sony live or whatever that's where you know they they have all those as I said the granular data about what works with the audience and that's probably you know where the audience you know is in the center it's not about the 27,000 crores it's about you know whether the audience would be willing to spend that money and that would be you know on maybe on a monthly basis because probably if I'm not happy with the content I'll go off and you know probably not come back. So there's a lot bigger challenge for the content providers there so it's not just about you know and as we just said you know and so very important that you know when you have you know one kind of content you know which the users get used to probably even on other platforms they're looking for that kind of a content so you know it's like that push pull effect that will carry on. So I'm sure you know we are in for very very interesting times and you know these are very important concerns for all the different parts of industry you know whether it's the theater in the multiplex industry that's a big challenge and it's not just related to you know the TRP thing it's about the the bigger crisis that you know bigger crisis of you know reputation that that Bollywood is faced with so there are very important issues involved there. Thank you so thank you so much for the question any I mean how please Vinitji. Yeah I'm Vinit from Delhi just I'm asking a current scenario question related to current scenarios this is what do you think about the Republic TV and headlines today in last a few months there are many differentiate coming in news about TRP offer about TV and headlines today what do you think about these things? I think you know more than you know about our individual things I mean it's about you know the the systemic thing so I would you know not not want to you know pinpoint any any single you know channel on this platform but as you as you can you know as I just said you know you're just dealing with very very small number of people if you're talking about say for example if I just go down 44,000 across India you know all those 165 40 whatever so many places if I if my advertiser is looking for you know an audience in Mumbai in that A1 A2 category then I just have to deal with a few hundred people maybe maybe in their 50s so you know if then if you have the right connections and because the system has all these you know leakages then you can you know make them work to your advantage and make lots and lots of money about it but at the end of the day you know there are as you understand a lot of other issues involved there including credibility among among the viewers including you know whether whether the viewer on on a cross-platform so there are various ways of finding out about you know whether the information is is regarded as credible by the audience because it's not just a one-way process I mean the other side of the audience as well is very important because a lot of the audience you know would want you know certain kind of content which others would regard as fake I mean I'm just saying that there's a possibility that I mean what we classify as fake the audience would not you know regard that is fake some of the audience because of you know their cognitive biases because of their confirmation biases there is a cognitive dissonance if I say that okay this is fake they'll say that you are fake I mean I because I think this is correct so that is why it has to be correct and then a lot of a lot of you know viewers are you know not looking at it scientifically but as I love saying that they are looking at it like a lawyer so I already had that belief so I want any evidence and I find any evidence you know to go with my which resonates with my point of view I find that as credible and if it does not then I don't find so there are many layers to that and it's a deeper understanding of that is that is required okay thank you sir thank you so much should you let the madam and father Paul I mean would you want to add something yeah I am just enjoying the presentation and I was also waiting for what you would say about the the PRP controversy that is going on I just want to be new on the on this platform on this yeah yeah I mean that's that's because you know people have a very easy way of you know understanding you know what makes money and that's the crux of it so once you know that it's very difficult to you know get out of that and it's so important that you know this has to be you know cleaned right from the top to you know once once for all because as I've just you know shown from 2008 to 2020 you know this has been carrying on for for quite long I mean and it's and that that that pilferage that manipulation that kind of you know trying to use the system to your end I mean you can do I mean as as as you know the NBA has just you know put up to try because there are a lot of other things happening as well one channel you just named the republic channel is is you know appearing with Tamil channels for example so I mean if it belongs to one genre it may if it's a english news channel it must be in that bracket so if you're you know clubbing it with other channels people you know just by by skimming through channels they might go there and that would add to so lots and lots of things are there so now the industry itself is divided into all those groups and I'm sure you know they are taking care of that is there any other question usb thank you very much for such a well-timed discussion I think you can already see from the engagement that it was very important and yes for my part I've always been interested in learning about more about engagement and quality of the audience rather than only looking at numbers because that basically tells us about what what could be the milestones for various television channels and we know that if the audience kind of tells you that there are x number of viewers and they're continuously growing then there won't be any kind of challenge or pursuit of private channels to kind of enhance the quality of the programming that they're conducting or facilitating whether news or otherwise and that was a very important issue for me and yes I think what you just mentioned to father paul is the fact that it is all out in the public domain is equally important because then there will be a push for a more scientific setup of the monitors and since this is a contemporary issue I think the young people will also have the opportunity to learn a little more like me many of us are actually learning a little more than we probably knew of and that is also an opportunity I see thank you over thank you so much ma'am so nice of you to you know for such a you know detailed feedback on that and another way of looking at the confirmation bias is by labeling you know people say by labeling the thing you know by independent endorses and that's very important so once you know you are labeled as you know people who are doing these kind of things then with the other audience you know it sticks on with you so there are some some some very nice ways of you know going across it but this you know awareness is a very important issue and one reason why you know we had to you know just bring it up in just two days time you know this as you know that this was not planned you know we were at a different webinar you know and it was connected bilingually and I was speaking more in Hindi there and that's where some friends pointed out that why don't you do that in English so and thanks to my colleagues you know on Sunday afternoon we planned this webinar and on Sunday late afternoon it was you know all the registration links and the posters and everything was there and it was a lot easier for me to you know just come and and it's such a you know wonderful encouragement that you know people like father paul and sutrita madam and others you know they are here it's just really very very encouraging if there are any other questions I would love to address that this the youtube link of this particular discussion will be shared with all participants so there are people who've been asking for yeah and you'll be getting e-certificates within an hour of this particular webinar so I would request everyone to fill up the feedback form very clearly and write your name clearly because the name you write there on the feedback form is what will appear on the on your e-certificates so please write your name and email very clearly because if your email is not clear then it might go off to you know that wrong email that you and you might end up in not getting the certificate so thank you again everybody and thank you for the encouragement we'll keep coming back with such things you know and I'm sure that you know this discussion will be useful you know for future discussions as well so is there anything from any other any any other show we wanted yeah ask one question dr pande sir yeah yeah yeah please sir we have come to know this tanish advertisement the controversy was on the tanish advertisement the cultural affinity cultural dichotomy or cultural differences uh as you know the problem is you know when anything goes up into a domain of conflict uh then you know uh it it has so many dimensions uh if I were an advertiser and a lot of people say that you know if you're getting this much of visibility then this is very very good for you so uh so so so that's one way of looking at it but again as you would see that different people would react to it very differently the way you and I would react to that will not be the way in which b and c will react to that and which d and e will react to that and so on and so forth so they they probably wanted to reach out to us probably we might not have you know seen the video if they hadn't withdrawn just one way of looking at it so now that you know they are doing it and very often you know when there's a controversy about the thing you know it gets a lot more visibility and so so I'm sure a lot of people realize that so so so there will be a lot of support for that from one end and there will be some backlash from the other end but as you as you know so it takes and what what I mean I'm reminded of what St. Teresa you know used to say and we just started as a journalist then and it was that it takes all kinds to make the world so once once you realize that okay there will always be you know people who will be intolerant of my point of view then you know we have to live with that but again these are very very complex issues and I'm sure you know yes this will this will you know lead on to you know a better better understanding better awareness and you know and hopefully a better society for all of us in the future thank you sir thank you professor thank thank you ma'am and anybody else has anything to say to add because you know after today we are going on to a puja vacation so if there's anyone who wants to add something or to ask something you are free to go if not I'll take the opportunity to thank all all the wonderful attendees today all my wonderful colleagues you know shatabradha paul shravanimukhapadhyay ushoshi raya shengupta kongta mojimdar athoshi bhadacharya anunna shen jyotishav thank you very much for for being such wonderful super colleagues without your help this wouldn't have happened thank you again shucharita madam thank you father paul thank you shomo thank you shujata madam uh so i'll take your leave now thank you very much sir take it thank you thank you thank you thank you