First TV rating system for North-East India Chrome NE launched

The North-Eastern region was untapped by existing television rating agencies TAM and aMAP so far.

Neha Saraiya | Delhi | August 3, 2011

The Media audit company, Chrome Data Analytics and Media, yesterday unveiled its new tool catering to the North-East Markets of the country. Chrome NE will furnish data about the viewing trends to Channel Broadcasters, Media agencies and brands present in this region. As the ONLY comprehensive connectivity report in the North Eastern region, Chrome NE will furnish facts to the industry by providing insights to all key stakeholders into this untapped territory.

Covering eight cities- Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim in the NE region, the tool will track out the C&S households in all 0.1 Mn.

The current scenario of the Television Industry in the country, on the Broadcaster's front, out of a total of 626 channels running in the country, 314 show general content (non- news) and 312 are based on news. Besides this 75 channels are permitted to uplink from overseas and 29 new applications have been received from a period of July 2010 to Jan 2011. While the CNOs have 100 channels on the analogue platform and 262 channels on the digital platform. As a result there is a huge gap in the Demand & Supply of frequencies, available on Cable Networks- thereby resulting in the 1600+ Crores carriage fee industry in India.

Explaining the functioning behind the launch of the tool specifically for the NE region, Pankaj Krishna, Founder & CEO, Chrome Data Analytics & Media says, “Currently the scene at this region is that Guhawati is being considered as the sample for representation of the entire north-east region. Thus media planners, channels and brands are investing in this particular city with high carriage fees. So, we got a push from Broadcasters to provide a data for the region that covers 35 + networks adding up to a population of 4.5 Cr with a C&S base of 4.15 Mn (see the charts below).”

The report will be a weekly affair that shall be released every Monday wherein the Broadcasters will get information regarding their own availability for the previous week at every individual head-end as well as the competitor's precise distribution stats across all key head-ends and markets.

The methodology used for the data collection involves a television converter or set-top box that transposes the channel from a cable television service to an analogue RF signal on a single channel, used to identify the frequency at the Panel Home. A Parallel Home technique, to monitor the transmission quality of individual channels across head-ends, is followed. Each Panel Home has 3 Parallel Homes within a radius of 3 Kms, equipped with cable ready television sets.

Interestingly Pankaj further elaborated on the fact that how this tool is different from the TAM data as he says, “TAM tells you that how good or bad you are, while we tell why you are good or bad? Technically the current in-depth analysis is for focussed audience, while our data is fairly accurate in terms of representing a broad category. '

Besides the national players the tool will also provide data to regional channels like Focus TV, NE Bangla, NE hi Fi, Prag, DY 365, News Live, NE TV, Prime News, Frontier TV, Rang, DY365, Hit 7 etc. And will also be an important decision-makers for advertisers like telecom brands and FMCG products.

Neha@BestMediaInfo.com

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