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Turkish Broadcaster Pulls Out of Ratings
The Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) has announced that its stations will no longer be included in audience measurement provided by AGB Nielsen Media Research, which has been carrying out TV audience research in the region since 1989.
In a statement sent to the TÝAK - the industry committee responsible for awarding the contract for managing the country's audience measurement - TRT alleged that AGB had 'violated competition regulations'.
The broadcaster also complained that while ratings for the station's most-watched channel TRT 1 rose from the beginning of 2008 through to March 2009, they began to fall in April 2009 'for no apparent reason'.
'TRT has been pointing out the deficiencies of the rating system, including the violation of competition regulations, for two years, both to TÝAK and to the public, and asking for the necessary precautions to be taken,' TRT officials stated. 'While they accept the criticisms concerning the theoretical basis of the system, TÝAK members and AGB Nielsen have not yet taken a solid step towards a solution.'
Last summer, TRT complained about TÝAK's awarding the ratings contract solely to AGB for a number of years and alleged there were 'irregularities' in AGB's selection of panel members, changes to panels and processing of raw data.
However, AGB responded by saying its own panellists had alerted it proactively to corruption issues. In addition, TÝAK said that the contract had been put out for tender in a normal fashion and three companies had paid for tender documents.
In October, the contract was awarded to TNS, which is taking over the TV viewer measurement contract in January 2011 from AGB. Through the new contract, TNS will establish a 3,500 household reporting panel and provide TÝAK with a TV meter system using its 5000 Series Modular PeopleMeter. In addition, the Turkish industry will adopt TNS' InfoSys+ TV and radio audience analysis software.
While TRT says that the new tender is still 'fundamentally flawed', it will consider participating again from the date TNS takes over.
Web sites: www.agbnielsen.net and www.tns-global.com .
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