SATELLITE & CABLE: Twin Peoplemeters double the trouble for India's media and marketing scene

Fourteen months ago, after bitter competition, the industry-authorised national Peoplemeter contract finally went to a joint venture between the JWT-owned Indian Marketing Research Bureau (IMRB), and ACNielsen. ORG-Marg, owned by media group Business India, lost the Peoplemeter business - but reckoned correctly that there would be much official palaver before the IMRB-Nielsen venture took off, and decided to go into operation anyway with its own product, Intam. While large broadcasters like government-owned Doordarshan and Zee TV fussed over funding the Peoplemeter project, the ORG-Marg product was up and running, now with Dutch ally VNU. Spurred by the success of the 'unofficial' research on TV viewing habits, the IMRB-Nielsen combine finally put its funding together and came out with their official product, TAM. Many professionals have grave doubts about the direction that audience research is taking and are hoping for a recognisable industry standard. Mr Arun Kapoor, proprietor of Delhi-based ad agency Foresight, filed a complaint with the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission, contending that the survey size in TAM/Intam is inadequate, and that viewership data was liable to manipulation as both ventures are owned by users of the data: IMRB by HTA (Indian JWT) and ORG-MARG by Business India. "Nowhere else is a rating agency connected with an ad agency," Mr Kapoor claimed, arguing that agencies do not want to antagonise TV channels with which they do substantial business. Earlier this year, white goods major Videocon levelled much the same accusation in a public and bitter media battle and threatened punitive legal action. ATN programming director Yogesh Radhakrishnan echoed Mr Kapoor's comments and said, "No country in the world has two TV research companies." Mr Radhakrishnan was also critical of the way research is conducted by the two agencies. "All foreign research is done with channel expanders," he said. "In Mumbai, 40-50 per cent of viewers have black and white TV sets and colour TVs which are not cable-ready, showing 8-12 channels. How can a TV set that receives 8-12 channels be monitored for 60 channels?" Illustrating the point that TV research in India is in its infancy, Mr Amit Khanna, executive committee member of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation and CEO of programme provider Plus Channel, said, "There is very little qualitative research. Nobody really has a qualitative research model suited to the Indian environment. The number of eyeballs does not tell you anything. In a comparative environment, you have to look for qualitative research." Mr Rakesh Sharma, programming and marketing consultant with Tamil language Vijay TV, said that while TAM and Intam provide broad demographics of the family audience, they ignore the specifics. "If you want a detailed analysis of the high end subscriber, 15-24 years old in 200 satellite homes, the ratings don't show up because of insufficient data," he said. Mr Sharma's point of view was that research is not an end in itself. "I look at research for 25 per cent, and 25 per cent total experience. Feedback comes from a variety of sources: people working within the channel, advertisers, trade, social gatherings, anecdotal experience," he said. "The remaining 50 per cent is gut feel, your analysis of the comparative environment and what you think is right for that particular market." Mr Alex Kuruvilla, GM of MTV India and vice-president MTV International, also believed that research was useful, though not an absolute tool. MTV subscribes to both TAM and Intam because, Mr Kuruvilla said, "I feel that it is impossible to believe that you can ignore available research." The question that many professionals are asking is - why don't rivals TAM and Intam pool their resources, combine their small data bases into a larger, more meaningful one that can track a heterogeneous society like India more authentically? Until that scenario becomes a reality, Mr Peter Mukerjea, CEO of News Television India (News Corp), will remain scathingly critical of the two agencies. "The volumes of money spent on research in India is quite staggering and is structured on thin ice," he said. "It is not robust enough and is open to interpretation. I'd like to save money on research and deploy it elsewhere. Or get involved in pan-Asian research. The opportunities to fudge would be less."

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