MUMBAI: While television channels in the country are increasing by leaps and bounds, so are television homes. As a result of this, television consumers are also getting diverse. In order to understand the television consumer in a better way, Media Research Users Council (MRUC) held the first TV User Body Meet on 9 September in Mumbai.
The meet was presided over by Lintas India Media Services director Lynn de Souza, Leo Burnett India chairman and CEO Arvind Sharma, MRUC technical committee chairperson Roda Mehta and Raymond member of board of advisors Nabankur Gupta.
The User Body Meet was attended by Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea, Hawkins Cookers Ltd chairman and CEO Brahm Vasudeva, Hindustan Lever Limited group media manager Central Asia Rahul Welde, MRUC director general N P Sathyamurthy, MRUC technical committee member Amit Ray, MediaCom South Asia president Jasmin Sohrabji and Intellect head Premjeet Sodhi among others.
Keeping in mind the ever changing television landscape in the country and with addressability likely to increase in the coming years with DTH coming in, MRUC is of the opinion that access to television - for both advertisers and viewers - is likely to undergo significant changes in the coming year. Also, revenue and delivery models of the networks are also likely to explore hitherto unfamiliar territory.
As a result of this, the MRUC committee is looking at bringing about some major changes in the way television ratings are measured as the current television ratings are no longer an adequate indication of how viewers relate to the medium.
Considering the fact today there are two ratings measurement bodies - Tam and aMap; de Souza started her presentation by saying, "We are not here today to play a 'rate the ratings' game."
MRUC's directive was to see what can be produced to get accuracy in the ratings and evaluate the present systems and see of there is a way to find the right solution. "MRUC's mandate is to see what users want and today neither of the ratings systems is good enough as they are not covering the entire country. We are here to find what is the new thing that we can come up with?" said Mehta.
She further added that what was needed was a system that would cut costs, speed up the process, provides accurate data than what is currently available.
The next MRUC User Body Meet will be held in Delhi on 16 September, wherein these issues will be discussed with a different set of representatives from the broadcast, advertising and media industries will be present.
De Souza assured that once that was done, MRUC will be forming two new committees - the technical committee and the business committee and act on the suggestions that were presented by the industry and work towards bringing about adequacy and accuracy in the television measurement systems in the country.
