The Unanswered Questions About TV Ratings
It's been over 10 weeks since the rating mechanism has resumed TV ratings for individual news channels. Ratings and measurement are supposed to bring order and enable a currency for all stakeholders to conduct their business fairly and transparently.
However, instead of achieving a balanced measurement system for all stakeholders, these TV ratings are baffling and bemusing to say the very least.
The current rating and measurement method leaves several questions unresolved instead of providing answers and regaining credibility.
The present regime seems to be taking the sheen off, and raising several doubts about the mechanism.
Questionable Premises
Should landing pages’ viewership be counted as legitimate viewership or should this data be factored in ratings? This is the first question.
Certain broadcasters factored this aspect in the earlier system and the then rating mechanism CEO allowed it. The technical board of the rating mechanism has continued the practice of landing page data being featured as input for audience representation. I strongly urge the stakeholders to reconsider this. No viewership or its weightage should be minimised. The advertiser is paying for engaged and real viewers, not accidental bait viewers who are forced to leave impressions on a certain page.
Need To Clean Up
The second issue that worries me is about the people and professionals who are part of the news industry. There are news channel owners who rightly stayed away and criticised shortsighted practices such as landing page viewership being given weightage. This practice is clearly to stay ahead in the short term, ignoring the long-term adverse impact on the industry at large.
But there are also news organisations that have accepted professionals who have been mired in controversies and were earlier involved in malpractices. This is very disturbing. One must keep faith and conviction in one’s content and the process, rather than hiring professionals who were once publicly accused of malpractices.
This is double-speak and espouses the low morality of some news media owners and their eagerness to do well in the short term. Ideally, such professionals should have been singled out and dealt with in an official, structured manner.
The third issue is around data collection itself. Many employees from the data-gathering agency that was accused of malpractices, lacking checks and tampering data have joined a new agency, which is supposed to protect and gather data. This is ironic and shows the lack of any oversight, making it evident how easy it is to violate TV ratings data.
There is a need to clean up the system.
The Means & The End
I learned two things early in my life and I genuinely believe in them. First, while performance matters, it’s the effort and overall impact that matters more. This is true for high school students and it is also true for professionals and entrepreneurs. It’s not only about the final score, but the overall development. Achievement alone does not make you a good human being.
Second, divine blessings help. If you have blessings, everything works out.
As rating mechanism resumed news channel ratings in the last 10 weeks, a relatively newer channel has done well. Its war coverage has been touted as the reason. Another channel that was launched a couple of years ago, has also done well. Incidentally, these two channels were also the ones that were bullish and pushing for rating resumption.
I keep saying, and have heard from a close friend’s father in the past, ‘coincidences are not so coincidental’. For people who understand Urdu ‘ittefaq bhi itne ittefaqan nahi hote’.
These two channels started doing well in viewership immediately after the announcement that the ratings are resuming in the first week of February.
Making Sense of Numbers
Let’s also observe the movement of AMAs (average minute audience in ‘000s), reach and TSPV (time spent per viewer) in the newsletter released augmented data. Immediately after the announcement on February 7, 2022, to resume ratings, the two youngest news channels started doing well in the seventh week itself.
The Time Spent data of one channel had suddenly gained massive viewership in a hugely abnormal manner when compared to other very established reputed players. Of course, there is a logical reason that its war coverage was carpet coverage and that did it.
In terms of the reach trend, the other Hindi news channel that has done well has now become number one in the latest week 12 data, while the one that was ranked 7 in the data, is now ranked 3.
Let’s deep dive into heavy viewers. The Hindi channel that has become number one has its two-hour-plus viewers increasing week after week with GRP contribution from 2-plus hours viewers going up from 11 per cent in Week 01 to 21 per cent in week 11. Way to go.
Now let’s review the TAM NCT data and check content differentiation in the Hindi news genre in week 09 and week 12 of 2022 . Extraordinary gains happen for this new number 1 in the UP and Uttarakhand markets. These were two states going to elections. Are the viewers more interested in the Ukraine war than their local elections? You have to ask this question in these two states where elections have very high involvement. This new number one gets an unexpected time spent increase in comparison to all other channels, across all three weeks in rolled data, counting weeks included.
Let’s look at AMA trend in Punjab and Chandigarh. This time there are even steeper gains for this new leading channel in the Punjab Chandigarh market at a time when a new political party is winning with huge margins.
Let’s also look at TSPV trends. This new leading channel is showing unexpected time spent levels in Punjab and Chandigarh. This is at a time when in Punjab, a new political history is being created by AAP getting a full majority and the govt formation is happening. But for some reason, viewers are glued to war coverage on a particular channel.
Now let’s look at reach in millions in the Hindi speaking markets in week 11 vs week 40 which is four-week rolling. There is an increase in reach of 40 million in a single week which seems impossible to me, who is both an avid news watcher as well as someone who has been watching media for more than two decades.
Continued Coincidences
Let’s take another genre, Bangla news, as a case now. It is important to note here that this new Hindi leader chooses to selectively opt out of the Bangla genre. Again, such coincidences cannot be so coincidental. On Feb 7, the announcement was made for data release and the other gainer channel in Hindi sees steep rise in its Bangla channel. Even when it launched, it did not do well in the Bangla genre.
Now let’s look at TSPV trends in the West Bengal (WB) rural market. One can see as soon as data gets released by the ratings mechanism in week 10 (on a 4-week rolling average), this Bangla channel gains extraordinarily in terms of the time spent in the WB rural markets. Now let's look at reach trends. This new Bangla genre gainer channel is also ahead in reach in WB rural markets. This is a market, which for a certain channel that is in Hindi, is home ground and its reach has been built over years with massive investments and very deep editorial inroads.
In WB, with less than 75 lakh urban markets, this new Bangla genre channel also leads in TSPV and has big gains after the first rolled out data in week 10 of 2022. The reach trends in WB, of less than 75 lakh urban markets, see this new leader ready to overtake the incumbent. It’s quite a dash.
Now let's look at another regional news genre --- Kannada and Telugu. This new Hindi leader which is also in Kannada stays stable even during the war weeks in AMA trends. Plus, in this market, this channel has been around longer than its new Hindi avatar. With the same war content, there is no rise in TSPV for this Kannada variant of the leading gainer Hindi channel in Karnataka. The levels are constant. Now let's also look at the reach trend in Kannada News. This Kannada variant sees a slight fall in its Kannada channel in the post-war week.
In the Telugu news genre, with the same war content, the Telugu franchise hasn’t gained in the Andhra Pradesh market. It is also noteworthy that with the same war content, the Telugu time spent starts falling in the market. Also in terms of reach, both the Kannada franchise and the Telugu franchise go hand in hand.
The Inconsistencies
I am just sharing data and trends from the last 10 weeks of ratings. I can continue to give you many more instances and data points but I hope you understand what I am trying to fundamentally ask.
There are too many inconsistencies. There is a lot to ponder about, and the answers are not coming by.
Most of the channels have been doing well and are seeing either their English or Hindi platforms perform well except two channels. We know which are these two that are not doing well but let me take names --- ABP News and AajTak.
AajTak and ABP news are the only two channels that have seen a consistent decline. We have to ask the question why? It’s a legitimate question. The incentive for everyone not to question the mechanism or not walkout is there are some weeks they do well, so they have less disincentive to walking out of the rating mechanism or question malpractices.
There is a huge variance in the rolled vs unrolled data in the TV ratings mechanism in terms of cumulative reach in every parameter. How does one explain that?
I don’t have the answers but something doesn’t add up here.
I would also like to reiterate that the two channels that have gained were the ones very aggressively pushing for ratings to come back. How come they were so sure they would grow in ratings? One of the CEO s of the new Hindi number one has been telling its own team and other external stakeholders the precise weeks when they would be in what position in viewership. Clearly, the CEO is a clairvoyant and a futurist or possibly has a very good astrologer.
Unresolved Concerns
The questions to be asked are how come two channels that did traditionally well and were number one and number three have fallen to number two and number seven. Incidentally, these two channels are seen to be more objective in their coverage as well. They are the ones who are not doing well. Could this be a game to discredit these channels and prop up two new players as leaders? I am asking an obvious question here.
The TV rating mechanism in the past has seen manual data manipulation. What is the guarantee that this time this has not been done or done with more calibration? What is the chance that the external manipulators are again doing the same from new organisations that they are now part of? What is the guarantee at the data level that the former employees of the ratings mechanism and data agency are not tampering with data now? Can these questions be answered honestly and in a granular way?
The advertisers and marketers and media planners and media buyers in my view should take new ratings with a fistful of salt, and also ask more questions to the rating mechanism board. The new chairman is a man who is seasoned and tremendously respected and someone who can reach out to all stakeholders and bring respectability back, answering the questions that have been raised. He has an envious job and I am sure he will do the right thing as his intent is right. In the past rating mechanism, CEOs have been either clueless or in one particular case have been accused of actually manipulating.
Walking out of the rating en masse by news channels is an option. However, that may not be an answer to this maze.
Is shutting down this faulty mechanism the right way? Would it be a case of throwing the baby with the bathwater? Is it allowing players to do ratings the right way? Is there a way of correlating the data with surrogates the right way? Maybe. I do not have all the answers. However, the current mechanism is muddying the waters and bringing disrepute to itself. All the stakeholders must get together to get meritocracy in ratings and ensure the right practices are resumed rather than the current way of doing ratings.
Someone needs to ask the right questions. After all, coincidences are not so co-incidental. The divine hand in ratings is leading to the currency losing its sheen. It’s time to bring the credibility back.
Dr Annurag Batra has been writing on media for two-plus decades and is the Founder of exchange4media and the Editor-in-Chief of BW Businessworld.
