Television Rating Points

Television 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. It indicates the popularity of a channel or programme and this data is very useful for the advertisers. Example : IPL had 7.5 TRP which means 7.5 viewers out of ten watches IPL. Presently, INTAM (Indian Television Audience Measurement) is the only electronic rating agency functioning in India.

The TRP System reports on the daily viewership of individuals aged 8 years and above residing in TV owning homes in the nine key metropolitan cities of India. All TV channels keep a track of it to find out how many viewers are watching their programme. They can calculate the percentage of viewers who are watching their programme and helps in identifying what the reach of the programme. With that, they decide whether or not to continue a particular programme.

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.

Two methodologies are used for calculating TRP. First is frequency monitoring, in which 'people meters' are installed in sample homes and these gadgets continuously record data about the channel watched by the family members. 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. Second technique is 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.

Presently, TRP is based upon only a small urban sample of 5500 homes spread all over India. Doordarshan has its own ratings system DART (Doordarshan Audience Ratings). DART is a diary based system of ratings. DD people distribute diaries in sample homes and the viewers are asked to note down each programme as and when watched by family members. In the end of the week a person collects all the diaries and sends them to the head office, where popularity of programmes is calculated.