AUDIENCE FEEDBACK-TRP AND RRP

Audience research is a systematic and accurate way of finding out about your
audience. There are two main things that audience research can do:

(1) estimate audience sizes, and

(2) discover audience preferences.

Radio and TV stations are unique in having a special need for audience research:
this is the only industry that cannot accurately count its audience. A factory will
always count the number of products it sells. A newspaper will (or could) always
know its paid circulation. An organization that provides services rather than
products (e.g. a hospital) is able to accurately count the number of people who walk
through its doors. But radio and television programs are given away free to their
audiences, and there is no way of measuring how many people tune into a program
- without audience research.

For this reason, audience research was one of the first forms of market research.
When radio became popular in rich countries in the 1920s, audience research
followed soon afterwards. In countries where broadcasters depended on commercial
revenue, such as the USA, audience surveys were done to find out how many
people would hear a particular advertisement.

In countries with public radio, such as Britain and New Zealand, audience research
began in the 1930s, seeking information from listeners. New Zealands first
audience survey was in 1932. Postcard questionnaires were sent out to households
with radio licenses, asking questions such as "Do you listen on a crystal set or a
valve set?" and "Do you dance to broadcast dance music?"

Since those days, audience research has moved far beyond radio and television.
The current growth area is internet audience research. And, though printed
publications have readers rather than audiences, the same methods apply.

Methods of audience research

The most common method of audience research is the survey: a group of people is
selected, they are all asked the same questions, and their answers are counted. But
as well as surveys, there are many other methods of audience research, including
observation, mechanical measurement (people-meters) and qualitative research.
The first part of this book deals with surveys, and the second part covers most of
the other methods.

Audience research methods can be applied for any activity with audiences: not only
radio and television stations, but also print media, artistic activities, and (most
recently) the internet. The methods described in this book apply to all of these, as
well as to the study of societies (social research) and economic behaviour (market
research).

elevision Rating Point (TRP) is a tool provided to judge which programmes are
viewed the most. This gives us an index of the choice of the people and also the
popularity of a particular channel.

Television Rating Point (TRP)

For calculation purpose, a device is attached to the TV set in a few thousand
viewers' houses for judging purpose. These numbers are treated as sample from
the overall TV owners in different geographical and demographic sectors.

The device is called as People's Meter. It records the time and the programme that
a viewer watches on a particular day. Then, the average is taken for a 30-day
period which gives the viewership status for a particular channel.

In India INTAM (Indian Television Audience Measurement) is the electronic rating

agency which does this work. INTAM uses two methodologies for calculating TRP.

The first is frequency monitoring, in which 'people meters' are installed in

sample homes and these electronic gadgets continuously record data about
the channel watched by the family members. 'People meter' is a costly
equipment, which is imported from abroad. It reads the frequencies of
channels, which are later, decoded into the name of the channels and the
agency prepares a national data on the basis of its sample homes readings.
But there is a drawback in the technique, as cable operators frequently
change the frequencies of the different channels before sending signals to
the homes. It may be very misleading to read a channel according to a
particular frequency even if the down linking frequency is same all over
India.

Second technique is more reliable and relatively new to India. In picture

matching technique people meter continuously records a small portion of the
picture that is being watched on that particular television set. Along with this
agency also records all the channels' data in the form of small picture
portion. Data collected from the sample homes is later on matched with the
main data bank to interpret the channel name. And this way national rating
is produced.

Example:
If an advertisement appears more than once, the entire gross audience also, the
TRP figure is the sum of each individual GRP, multiplied by the estimated target
audience in the gross audiences. The TRP and GRP metrics are both critical
components for determining the marketing effectiveness of a particular
advertisement. Outside of television, TRPs are calculated using the denominator as
the total target audience, and the numerator as the total impressions delivered to
this audience x 100. (As in 1,000,000 impressions among the target audience /
10,000,000 people in total in the target audience x 100 = 10 TRPs). TRPs are often
added up by week, and presented in a flowchart so a marketer can see the amount
of impressions delivered to the target audience from each media channel.

Radio Rating Point

Program rating means percentage of people listening to that program. The rating is
calculated by dividing the estimated number of people listening to that peogram
bytotal population multiplying the figue by 100.

Example:

Imagine a city with an estimated population of 10 lakhs. Of these, assume 4 lakhs to

be radio listeners. Further, 90,000 people like to listen to agricultural program and
30,000 people like to listen to agricultural program and 30,000 people like to listen
to sports show. Ratings are calculated as follows:
90,000/10,00,000*100=9 points for agri show

30,000/10,00,000*100=3 points for sports show

Indicating agri programs to be more popular compared to sports.