New Delhi: Television viewership will be better measured in India by implementing the new guidelines approved by the cabinet last week, information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari said on Tuesday.
There are methodological shortcomings in the current ratings system run by TAM Media Research, the minister said.
“In the long run, television rating agencies will be far more accountable and stringent in their functioning,” Tewari told delegates at the 20th Broadcast Engineering Society-BES Expo 2014 on Terrestrial and Satellite Broadcasting.
The new rules cleared on Thursday to govern the functioning of television rating agencies say that such firms will have to collect data from at least 20,000 homes, which will increase gradually to 50,000.
TAM monitors 9,602 TV-viewing households in a country that has 154.2 million homes with TVs.
The new guidelines prevent a single entity from having paid-up equity in excess of 10% simultaneously in both a rating agency and a broadcaster, advertiser or advertising agency. This will disqualify TAM, which is an equal joint venture of Nielsen (India) Pvt. Ltd and Kantar Media Research, a unit of London-based advertising company WPP Plc., Mint reported on Saturday.
