TRP is one of the common phrases used when it comes to television. But have you ever wondered what is TRP actually? TRP or television rating point is actually a measurement that helps to know the popularity of the particular serial in a particular country or in a specific region. In short, TRP directly affects the revenue generated by a particular TV channel. Well, here are some details about TRP
What is TRP exactly?
Television rating point popularly known as TRP is one of the tools that helps to measure the popularity of a particular serial. This tool helps to know which serial is viewed the most and which shows needs to be shut down. Like recently, if you are a fan of Star Plus you would know that Dehleez has come to an end, because of the low TRP of the serial. Meanwhile, in spite of coming from a fresh genre another serial from Star Plus, Tamanna will soon come to an end for the sole reason of low TRP. TRP basically give a channel a view of what is loved by the audience and what is not viewed at all.
TRP Stats
In high clustered TV serials in one particular channel, it becomes very difficult to know what works for the viewers and what is down the market. And hence, the tool of TRP makes the process quite simple by giving the insight of the serial viewed the most and so on.
How it is calculated and factors influencing 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 a 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 program 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.
TRP calculation
The most crucial part of TRP business is the sample size of the research. Presently, TRP is based upon only a small urban sample of 5500 homes spread all over India. Most of the sample homes are situated in urban areas 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 updated by every week and presented in a form of flowchart so that it comes easy for the marketer to know a number of impressions or viewers a particular serial or media channel is gaining.
There are two types of methods to calculate 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. However, this process can be quite misleading because cable operators frequently change the frequencies of the different channels before sending signals to the homes.
Rating
The second method is picture matching method in which a small portion of a picture is recorded every time on a particular television set. Data collected from the sample homes is later on matched with the main data bank to interpret the channel name.
Author: Rima Chowdhury
