TAM, TAM I am the Topper

TAM Media Research is the TV Viewership analysis firm of India. Besides measuring TV Viewership, TAM also monitors Advertising Expenditure through its division AdEx India.The viewership cell runs what is one of the largest Peoplemeter TV Panels in the World with Approx 30,000 sample individuals representing all the Class-I towns (towns with population more than 100,000) polled every week for their Viewership habits! This division measures television Viewership of audiences for the 300-plus TV stations operating in India.

It is in fact the only source of any information available about Televison viewership trends in India. It does this through Peoplemeters installed in television viewers' homes. TAM is hugely influential and its findings determine advertising on television channels. It has been here for nearly ten years and all along of course criticized for its limited size of its sample, for the absence of external auditing of TAM processes, the distribution of its Peoplemeters, for not covering the Hindi heartland properly and for inadequately reflecting Doordarshan's reach because of TAM's absence from rural India. In fact some Channels also allege that the names of the houses were the peoples meter is fixed are an open secret and hence they can be influenced. Jaya TV once aired from one such house who were provided with additional television for which they were asked to watch only Sun TV programs for the set which is fixed with the meter. Zee TV had revealed the names of some households in Mumbai and claimed that the Star being number one is fixed.

But it is viewed with at most respect by the Advertising media and the Channels and so they spend lots of money to get their reports. TAM has competition since 2006 From a-Map which gives overnight TV audience measurement. There is also new competition coming from Broadcasters Audience Research Council (BARC), a non-profit body of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Association of Advertising Agencies of India (AAAI) and Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA).The new rating system would be compatible with direct-to-home (DTH) and applicable to conditional access system (CAS) areas as well. Besides cities, the database would include rural and remote areas, which currently do not get reflected. The development assumes significance as though DTH is in a nascent stage in India, the number of subscribers are much higher than the current number of households that fall under the “people metre” that TAM or aMap has.The sample size of BARC is likely to be in the range of 18,000 to 25,000.

In Yesterday's Newspapers both NDTV and Timesnow boasted that they are the Number One and ironically both quoted TAM readings. The Truth is both are correct. TAM gives its readings for various categories and age groups. NDTV claims it is number one when the whole sample is considered. While Timesnow says the most relevant 25+ is with them and for the last four weeks cumulative it is ruling the roost.

Television advertising in India is on a roll. Despite talks of a slowdown in the economy, the television advertising witnessed 26% growth during the 1st half of 2008 compared to same period in 2007.There are enough reasons for Indian advertisers to continue to reach their target audience through television. Seventeen million new viewers got added to the TV viewing universe as per latest IRS, showing a growth of 4%. Multi-TV homes in urban have also increased by 16% touching a figure of 3 million giving more scope to individuals to view their preferred content.Total number of channels as reported by TAM is now 442, up from 368 a year back. DTH has picked up well with more number of entrants into the market; and the installed base is now estimated at about 6-8 million. Along with this increase in TV viewing audience, time spent on TV has also gone up. As per TAM it has gone up by 6%. This increase in time spent is partly due to the fresh content now available.Total number of advertisers on TV went by 4% in 2007-08. Existing advertisers have also increased investments on the medium. Television advertising revenue, as a result, is estimated to have touched around Rs 7,400 crore in FY 07-08 with an expected growth rate of 13%.

As per Tam Adex, ad volume growth in Hindi and English news channels which stood at 47,449 seconds in 2006 jumped to 62,173 in 2007. In the six-months period from January to June, it has already clocked 36,398 seconds.The share of ad volumes of news channels in the overall TV advertising pie has been growing steadily. It went up 16 per cent in 2007 from 15 per cent in 2006.The consumption of news too has increased. From 6.9 per cent in 2006, the Hindi news genre has surged to 7.4 per cent to end-2007 (Tam, c&s, HSM, 15+). In the first half of 2008, it is well-placed at 7 per cent as compared to 32 per cent covered by the Hindi entertainment channels. As per Tam, 51 per cent of news channels viewers are from 35+ years, 28 per cent comes from 15-24 years and the rest 22 per cent are from 25-34 years.

In the Hindi news genre, from January to June 2008 six month period, long-time leader Aaj Tak still rules the roost with an average relative market share of 18.98 (Tam, c&s, HSM, 15 +) per cent, followed by Star News with 17.94 per cent. In the third spot is India TV in terms of average relative market share (14.43 per cent).However, a closer look on month-on-month index puts India TV on the forefront in the month of May and in June shares the top spot with Aaj Tak (19 per cent each). Aaj Tak has been almost consistent with 19 per cent market share in the six month period. Its sister concern channel Tez has averaged 5.55 per cent. The six-month average of IBN7 is 8.92 per cent while NDTV India has an average of 8.11 per cent. Samay has 4.91 per cent from January to June. Newly launched channel News24 has an average of 4.42 per cent, Live India average 3.24 per cent while public broadcaster Doordarshan managed to pull 3.14 per cent.

The English news segment still continues with a three-way tussle. Six-month average places CNN-IBN with 29.09 per cent (Tam, c&s, All India, 15+) , NDTV 24X7 with 28.91 per cent while Times Now is at 28.58 per cent. Headlines Today stands at 13.34 per cent.

India is the only country in the world with more than 80 24-hour TV channels broadcasting programmes on news and current affairs, barely a quarter-century after the world's first 24-hour TV news channel (CNN or Cable News Network) came up in 1980.

The advertisements by both Timesnow and NDTV refer to recent times after the first six months that is in August and first week of September.
Thanks: TAM, a-Map, Indiantelevision.