This, however, is not about TAM or NDTV or even ratings. It is about media policy and our priorities.
There have been three papers/reports on television ratings from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) and the ministry of information and broadcasting in the last five years. Almost all of them came to the same conclusion. There is a problem with ratings. A sample of 35,000 Indians in a market with 740 million viewers is too small. Then there are issues of methodology, all of which TAM admits to. It is willing to increase its sample size, but the cost is too much for its Rs 50-crore or so top line. One of the Trai reports puts the number for covering over 108,000 people at Rs 660 crore. Nobody wants to foot the bill.
TAM is a virtual monopoly, not a real one. The market is open to anyone who wants to come and offer rating services. One player, aMap, has already given up. Thanks to the television industry's inaction, TAM happens to be the only player. Now the industry has got its act together. The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) is finally working on an alternative. We should see new data in the next year or so, going by senior BARC officials.
The point is that the Rs 37,000-crore television industry is largely run by private companies. If they have a problem with TAM, let them deal with it. It doesn't befit the ministry of information and broadcasting, which runs Prasar Bharati, to keep coming back to ratings. Just like newspaper readership or box office numbers, it is an industry metric. There has been trouble with both readership and box office numbers, but the ministry of information and broadcasting has never commented on them. Why, then, bother with ratings - not once, but again and again? The ministry of information and broadcasting should be more worried about the political ownership of the media, paid news, rationalising entertainment tax, easing the satellite policy for direct-to-home operators - among the dozens of other things it could do to help the industry generate more revenues, taxes and employment. Why not tackle them with the same efficiency with which it handled digitisation?
As for Doordarshan, it has in many ways a legal monopoly over terrestrial broadcasting. That is a position it could use to improve standards of content in news broadcasting a la the BBC. Think about it.
It is mandatory under the Cable Act to have Doordarshan channels on the prime band or the best real estate on your television. Doordarshan can appropriate the feed of any sporting or other event from a private channel in "national interest". So far this national interest hasn't moved beyond cricket. It has the best transmission infrastructure in the country, at over 1,000 towers. Going by reports, in 2011-12, on revenues of Rs 1,409 crore, it had expenses of over Rs 2,890 crore. So taxpayers spend anywhere between Rs 1,500 crore and Rs 1,800 crore every year to keep Prasar Bharati, the "autonomous" body that runs Doordarshan and All India Radio, afloat. If all that money and the legal privileges given to Doordarshan were given to a private broadcaster, TAM or no TAM, it would have been hugely profitable.
But, and this is the point, Doordarshan's mandate is not to make money. Its mandate is to be a public service broadcaster. At the cost of repeating myself, the BBC blows up a lot of taxpayer money, but it is a globally respected broadcaster. It has forced private broadcasters in the UK to maintain high standards. At a time when news standards in India are going down the tube, having a news broadcaster that does not have the revenue or viewership pressure that the private ones face would do wonders. If Doordarshan could lift standards and get viewership, it would have done more than its duty as a public service broadcaster. As both taxpayers and viewers, we would be happy with it.
Could the ministry of information and broadcasting, then, work on fixing Doordarshan instead of TAM?
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