TRP Explained

Medansh Thusoo
TRP stands for Television Rating Point(s) which indeed is a very important tool which tells which programme or a channel is being viewed the most. It is also a tool which indicates how popular a programme is. It also shows how many times a particular programme or a channel is being watched by the people.
Why does it have to be Calculated?
A very essential question arises that why TRP has to be calculated and the answer to this question is quite simple, i.e., advertisement. Advertisements as well as the advertisers play a very important role when we talk about revenue or monetary gains of a channel whether it is a news channel, an entertainment channel, an infotainment channel or any other kind of channel . A simple reason behind it is that each and every programme that is telecasted on the television, mainly earns it revenue from advertisements that are being displayed.
TRP or television rating point(s) tells that for how much duration a particular program or a channel is being watched and as a matter of fact, advertisements are a major source of revenue for all the channels that are being telecast on the television. And, now it is crystal clear why each and every programme or a channel is in a rat race of getting high TRP.
How is TRP Calculated?
The work of calculating the TRP is done by a government organisation known as BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council). BARC gives a list of statistics on a weekly basis which has many genres such as English Entertainment, English News, etc. or Hindi News, Hindi Entertainment or statistics of some regional channels, etc.
TRP is calculated in the following two ways-
People’s Meter – People’s meter is a device used to calculate the TRP. This process of TRP calculation is monitored by INTAM (Indian Television Audience Measurement). In this process of calculating the TRP, the people’s meter is connected to various households (in thousands) that are spread across different demographic regions. This device notes down the time durations of the channel and the program that a viewer watches. The data is collected and analyzed from all these households which then gives the viewership status of the channels and the program. After analyzing the information, TRP of the channel or programme is decided. The data is in the form of codes which are transmitted to INTAM Centre and the data is being analyzed.
Picture Matching – Picture Matching is the second method used by the agencies. In this method the people meter records a small portion of the picture that is being watched on the TV. This data is collected from a set of homes in the form of pictures and later on is analyzed to calculate the TRPs.
Significance Of TRP
So, now when we have come to know about how TRP is being calculated, now it is also important to know how it is useful. Basically, the TRP system is quite useful for the advertisers as it makes it simpler for them to analyze the market trends as this data by BARC clearly tells that where most of the people are engaged and thus it attracts the advertisers too. A simple principle working here is that more the people, more TRP, and hence more advertisers and eventually more the revenue.
Also a point to be kept in mind is that approx. 95% – 97% of revenue of a channel is being generated by the advertisements and now it is quite clear why such eye catchy content is being created these days. Also, if a channel has high TRP, the cost of advertising on the channel would naturally be high whereas if a channel has low TRP, it wouldn’t get much advertisements and if they get, they are displayed at a comparatively low rate.
Some Drawbacks
Since, we know that everything has two aspects, i.e., positive as well as negative. So, now when we have come to know about the actual purpose or the positive side of TRP, now, let’s throw some light on its negative side too.
Some major drawbacks are as follows:
In this rat race of getting high TRP, sometimes the channels tend to forget the basic ethics of a channel or a programme. These days this is quite often that we see that many broadcasters literally are showcasing anything that has sensationalism and drama, which eventually leads to high TRP and thus more revenue.
One thing is quite evident, i.e., whenever a so-called reality show is being broadcasted, it has many sponsors and even when there is an ad-break, we see tons of ads being displayed which clearly indicates the high TRP of a channel. Why is that so, that there are so many ads being displayed? A simple reason is because of the high viewership of that channel.
The third most important factor which has to be kept in our mind is that for measuring TRP, a few selected households are selected and then the People’s meter tells about the watching minutes/hours of a viewer for a particular channel, that which channel is being watched for how much duration and that channel is of which genre, and hence TRP is being calculated on this basis. But a major problem here is that a few households can’t be used to represent the choices of millions of people who are living across India. So, hence this method can’t be used as a fool proof method of measuring the viewership of a particular programme and a channel.
(The author is a blogger and a student of Class 10th in Jodhamal Public School)
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