India Faces Ratings Blackout as BARC Confirms Choice

In India, TV ratings regulator BARC has confirmed rumours that French company Médiamétrie is its official technology partner, and will provide licences to BARC to use its TV metering system. Meanwhile the country faces the prospect of having no audience ratings at all until October this year.

Reported on www.indiantelevision.com , BARC Chairman Punit Goenka made the announcement and signed the deal at Mumbai's ITC Grand Central hotel this week, a month and a half after rumours suggested the French firm had been selected at a weekend meeting.

BARC tech committee Chairman Shashi Sinha said Médiamétrie's watermarking technology makes its measurement 'very accurate' and allows it to occur 'when [data] is simulcast'. He added that the new ratings system 'should be up and running by 1st October, 2014'. The contract is said to have been signed for 'a 1+5 year term'. Médiamétrie SVP Benoit Cassaigne said his company was excited to be a part of the deal.

Attention now shifts to how ratings are to be generated in the next 8 months. The Indian government announced just over a week ago that it would regulate television ratings agencies in the country, requiring them to register with the I&B Ministry within 30 days, and raise sample size to a minimum of 20,000 panel homes: and perhaps most significantly, its guidelines say no investor can have more than a ten percent equity holding in both ratings agencies and a broadcast or advertising company - this specifically excludes the current currency provider TAM, which is a 50:50 Joint Venture between WPP's Kantar and Nielsen, and will mean that from February its ratings will not be compliant.

Goenka appears unbothered by the idea of a ratings blackout: he says 'we hope there isn't... but if there is then it can't be helped.' However, Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) Chairman Hemant Bakshi said advertisers were 'obviously worried' and suggested historical ratings might have to be used - presumably a combination of the January ratings with seasonal adjustments based on last year's.

In an interview with www.firstpost.com , Kantar boss Eric Salama expressed dismay with the terms of the guidelines, pointing out that the 30-day timeline was 'unworkable' while the ban on cross-ownership was 'not something that will promote the most competition or the best service for the Indian industry' - and was not something that existed in any other country in which Kantar does business. He continued: 'It's a red herring that has been introduced. Even one of the companies that BARC wants to work with, called Mediametrie, has got an ownership stake from Publicis and Omnicom. Now, I don't think that Publicis and Omnicom's ownership stake in Mediametrie affects what Mediametrie does from a professional point of view. And what TAM does is not affected by the ownership stake either.' Salama said that if nothing changed in the coming weeks (presumably meaning no flexibility in the guidelines), 'then in theory, the industry could have no ratings at the end of 30 days, which I think is a disaster for the industry. And I think most of the stakeholders within the industry believe that. It's in no-one's interest to have no ratings.'

Web sites: www.tamindia.com , www.mediametrie.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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