TV Pulse 2005, the annual research initiative put together by the Joint Industry Body (JIB) and Tam Media, series continues with the paper - Reel Pointer - A Tool to predict ratings for Blockbuster movies on TV.

This paper was contributed by Lodestar Media - Winner of the Best Paper award at Emmies - 2004.

• Devdas acquired for Rs 12 crores, delivers only 3.7 TRPs
• Humraaz delivers 12.0 TRPs, surpassing Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham‘s 8.1 TRPs
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The challenge was to bridge the information gap in the current TV programming scenario where blockbuster movies are among the biggest viewership/revenue genres but data to evaluate and price them does not exist. The aim was to predict TRPs of blockbuster films on TV and set buying benchmarks.

METHODOLOGY: REGRESSION MODELING

TRPs of past blockbuster movies modelled against factors that would help predict future performance.

Arriving at the factors:

• Box-office Collections - a quantifiable measure of viewer appeal and a sum of all the qualitative factors like star cast, music score, storyline and director that affect a film.
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• Recency - the interval between the time the movie was released to the time it was shown on TV. It was calculated as the number of days from release to telecast date.
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• Repeats - A movie that had been repeated too often was likely to lose its appeal hence assumed inversely related to TV rating.
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• Promos - Directly responsive to viewership, the number of promos had to be taken into account.
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• Channel of telecast - The cable operator plays a role in deciding whether a C&S home can receive a TV channel or not. Connectivity, in turn, affects a film‘s viewership.
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• Daypart - TRP was affected by the daypart or time of telecast (early prime, prime, late prime...)
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• Day - Weekends were associated with blockbusters. A film telecast on a Saturday night was likely to get more viewer interest than one shown on a Tuesday afternoon. However Zee scheduled its blockbusters on Thursdays to capitalise on weaker competitive programming.
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• Opposite viewing - The impact of competitive programming also had to be taken into account. A blockbuster movie scheduled on a channel at prime time may lose more viewers to programmes on other channels than a non prime-time film.