Fundamentals of TRPs (television rating points)

You have heard quite a times people taking about TRPs and every time you come across this term you want to discover what is this?You always find people talking about TRPs but never understood this fundamentals. Its easy calculations or may be you can say other way of judging any TV programs. TAM(Television audience measurement) is the research organization who conducts this research.There are approximately 10,000 new programs across approximately 260 channels every year. In order to understand viewership of the people these research are being conducted.

Why do we need this research: we need to conduct these research for the following reasons:

• India is a large place and people here are from diffent backgrounds and different taste. Hence we need to have primary research before spending crore of rupee on communication.
• Understand audience.
• Viewership habits.
• It is also beneficial or the media planners and companies to understand the psyche of the audiences.
• It also help to understand the media habits of the people .
• Example if I am a eco- friendly pencil maker an want to communicate with my audience then the only choice I am left with is to understand the Target audience and in this case my majority of users will be children from age group 6 to 16 years as the need to understand the product and what makes this pencil different from others.  So the TV viewing habit of my Target Group will be a bit different from others. So generally speaking I will have to place my add/ spots on channels where I can find these kids. So it could be cartoon channels or any other channels of kids genre.

How these research are being conducted: There is a device know as People's Meter(like our remote) which is fit in the  TV  sets of the selected house of the respondents(people who are part of TAM Research). This sample size is between 10000 homes which approximately mans around 60000 people.Earlier it was approximately 5000 household across cities of India. 

What is the output of this research:With this research we can find the approx TV viewing habits of individuals. Their liking. This is very generic word. But we can also find the program loyalty, channel loyalty and many more such aspects. As mentioned earlier this helps the advertiser and even channels to know their viewers liking and choices.

This article must have helped you understand the basic TRP fundamentals.