The I&B Ministry is planning to generate real-time data on what the 120 million TV viewing households are watching by putting a chip into the set top boxes (STB). The move comes at a time when dominant television ratings company, TAM Media Research, is facing the heat from the Competition Commission of India (CCI).

The move may also raise privacy concerns and invite protests from rights activists but ministry officials say only such a system can counter allegations about the existing methodology of calculating Television Rating Points (TRPs).

The multi-service operators (MSO) and direct-to-home (DTH) cable TV companies in metro and 38 cities, where cable TV digitisation has been completed, will have to insert chips in the STBs. The second phase of digitisation got over on March 31 when analogue signals in these cities were shut down.

In the third phase, all municipal towns will shift to digital signals and in the last phase the entire country will be covered. The STBs will come fitted with the chip in cities that will be covered under the third and fourth phase.

"The chip will cost about Rs 15. We will bring a regulation that would make it imperative for MSOs and DTH operators to use it and record the data, which has to be handed over to appropriate authority," a source in the ministry said.

To address privacy concerns about data being handed over to the government, the source said, the ministry is trying to build stakeholder consensus for a Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC). It will be the custodian of data and channels can access it if they want.

Some initial meeting on BARC were held but not all channels want to move on from TAM. TV viewership data by TAM has been drawing flak on issues such as its limited coverage and even manipulation.

In its recent petition to CCI, Prasar Bharti had accused TAM of generating data that did not cover rural households and, therefore, did not reflect the reach of its terrestrial network. TAM has to reply to the CCI notice by July 18.

"The revenue model of TV channels is heavily dependent on TRPs. So it is important that this data is authentic. Sampling the way it is currently done is open to flaws even if it is done with the best of intentions. We are looking at generating complete data for the country where there are no statistical sleights," the source said.

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