Art & Entertainment

Bring Your Own Referee

The bamboozler fight for ratings is mired in selective stats

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Bring Your Own Referee
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Aaj Tak and Star News are running a strange ratings race these days to live up to their respective taglines: Sabse tez (The fastest) and Aapko rakhe aage (Keeps you ahead). A few weeks ago, Star News advertised that it had become India's No. 1 Hindi newschannel with a 25% audience share (tam ratings for September 18-24, 2005) followed by Aaj Tak at 22%. A big jump, considering no other channel had managed to overtake the news giant since its launch in 2000.

A few weeks later, NDTV India came up with a counter-ad claiming to be the actual market leader with 21.3% share (aMap ratings for Sept 6-Oct 5, 2005). Now Zee News claims to have the highest audience share of 19% (aMap, Sept 25-Oct 1, 2005). Last heard, Aaj Tak seemed to have wrested the numero uno position again (23.4%) followed by Star News (22.4%) according to tam ratings, Sept 4-Oct 1, 2005.

So who then is really the No. 1? Star News claims that post-Mumbai floods they have been running neck and neck with Aaj Tak and had shared the top slot for three weeks before surging ahead of the rivals. Aaj Tak thinks these viewership fluctuations should be viewed as just a "blip" and that it is miles ahead of the rest with a reach of almost 30 million.

For a viewer, this web of statistics spells nothing but confusion. Right now tam (television audience measurement), despite its limited universe of 4,500-odd peoplemeters, is the only available mode of monitoring TV viewership in India. Recently, there's aMap, a new system that generates daily ratings instead of weekly. While Star and Aaj Tak have been using tam ratings to make their pitch, NDTV has gone with aMap to stake its ranking claim.

While there is a lot to debate about the accuracy of the ratings, what compounds the confusion is the kind of selective processing resorted to by most channels. Each would set its own benchmarks and pick up certain time slots and a set of viewers and programmes to stake a claim over leadership.

The advertisers may not get too affected by this ratings battle, considering their long-term investments on a channel and eye on consistent performance. But what is clear is that competition has risen and nobody can sit content. The gap between channels is being bridged, and the margins are fluctuating day by day. Even these contesting parties agree that news is getting almost as hot on TV as the saas-bahu sagas. Perhaps even hotter.

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