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It is naive to suggest that audience measurement is an easy thing to do: Eric Salama

Interview with Chairman & CEO, Kantar

Eric Salama

Urvi MalvaniaViveat Susan Pinto Mumbai
Eric Salama, chairman & CEO, Kantar, WPP's research arm, finds himself in the thick of a meeting on transparency issues pertaining to TAM, the JV on TV audience measurement and research with Nielsen in India, barely hours after landing in Mumbai. But Salama, a seasoned researcher and an alumnus of the Trinity College of Oxford, who also advises the British government on education, industry and e-business, is no stranger to this. TAM has been in the news for all the wrong reasons in the last year-and-a-half. Salama responds to questions posed by Urvi Malvania and Viveat Susan Pinto , ranging from the efficacy of TAM's measurement to its expansion plans. Edited excerpts:
 
Is TAM open to working with BARC?

We are happy to work with BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council). We have worked with various models around the world and I think BARC was originally conceived along the lines of the Broadcasters Audience Research Board (BARB) in the UK. We work incredibly well with BARB. The BARB committee consists of broadcasters, advertisers and agencies. They have a united voice on what the industry wants and it makes our job easier because we have a single body to deal with. We are not against a body which brings together the three main stakeholders to come up with a united point of view on what's needed. The only thing I am criticising is the naivety of some of the comments out there that suggest this is an easy thing we are doing and that the solution is to get rid of TAM and get someone new to do it.

Do you think TAM may become irrelevant with BARC coming into the picture? Is there any chance that Nielsen or Kantar would want to independently provide television audience measurement?

If it (BARC) thinks that it can set up a service that can serve the industry, it is for them to do that. That's where I think the naivety comes in. The two shareholders in TAM are Nielsen and Kantar who are the most experienced hands in the business. You have got the two best companies in audience measurement, applying all their energies and thinking to TAM. It feels a bit naive to think that someone else could do it at lower cost and better quality. We had been approached (by BARC) and were asked to pitch for different things. (But) we have a partnership and have a relationship through TAM and we are happy with that.

There have been allegations of tampering of data and panel homes...

There is no other country in the world where the level of debate has got as nasty (as it has here) and the way it has got into the mainstream press. So, it is commented on regularly in Parliament and the ministers talk about it. I think the debate has become a very emotional one and my hope is we can base it more on facts and have a much more rational conversation on what's going well, what needs to be improved instead of people just making allegations. Even the NDTV case was dismissed because the allegations did not hold water.

What role do you think the government can play to improve TAM?

There is lot that the government can do (to help TAM). A duty of 40 per cent is imposed on every peoplemetre we import. If the government wants to encourage the industry to grow the sample size at a lower cost, the fastest way is to remove the import duty that will cut our setting-up cost by half. In every market around the world, there are always issues with tampering of panelist homes. We have vigilance teams, people who look at the data. We take people out of the panel (if it happens) and rotate people on the panel. We clamp down heavily on the people who are involved. In other parts of the world, say China, the government takes a tough line and sends people involved to jail. There are people who go to jail for five years for trying to corrupt the panel. I dont think in India there is an anti-bribery law that enables the government to do that.

There is also a lot of concern over cross-holding in TAM. What is your take on it?

There are cross-ownership issues not only in India, but around the world. There are politicians who own TV stations, there are TV stations which own newspapers. There are conglomerates who own parts of TV stations. The issue is not cross-ownership in terms of share-holding. The issue is transparency and auditing. It is about making sure that there are ways of regulating (systems and process). If that is happening, it is actually a much better way of ensuring quality of service than anything else. And as I say, we are open to any level of scrutiny, auditing. We are happy with that.

TAM India has already set up a transparency panel where eminent people from outside the business and from outside the country come to look at the way things are being done and to look at the best practices in India. We have a vigilance team that works with the transparency panel to look into the allegations thoroughly.

What is TAM doing on the expansion of its sample size, a main concern of the broadcasters?

In terms of the sample size in India, there was a commission a few years ago and TAM worked with it. It concluded that 30,000 homes will be the optimum size in a country like India. And we committed to moving towards that. TAM India will be announcing expansion plans in the next few months. But remember that we are a commercial body, funded by the industry. We have talked to the industry on a number of occasions on increasing our sample which we are more than happy to do. But it requires some funding from the industry. Even in the case of rural expansion, we are more than happy to do it as long as the industry has one voice and there is enough funding coming our way.

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First Published: Nov 28 2013 | 9:50 PM IST

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