IBF meeting with AAAI, INTAM, TAM cancelled

Lalitha Srinivasan

Mumbai, Sept 12: In a surprise move, the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) has cancelled its much-hyped meeting with the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), INTAM, TAM, which was scheduled to take place in Mumbai on Friday, September 14.

It was earlier announced that advertisers, broadcasters and rating agencies would meet on this date to resolve the issues that have stemmed out of the recent TRP (television rating point) scam.
Reacting to the cancellation of the meeting in the midst of the TRP imbroglio, a leading media analyst in Mumbai said: “Even as TAM, INTAM and AAAI were getting ready to meet IBF, here comes the cancellation news. Personally, IBF has no major role to play in this meeting. It’s advertisers and ad agencies which need to meet and ask for fair play.”

Meanwhile, the relavant committees of the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) and the AAAI have equivocally expressed the view that the current TRP model is one of the best in the world and the sanctity of the data had not been tampered with. To examine the issues thrown up by the leakage of certain samples used to measure people meter-based television viewership, the AAAI and ISA convened a meeting on Monday, September 11. After reviewing the statistical and other information presented by their research partners, the AAAI and ISA came to the conclusion that the current TRP system is robust and essential. AAAI president Ramesh Narayan said: “The advertisers and ad agencies are the actual users of the TRP and are also the ultimate judges, and now the verdict is out.”

According to Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) chairman Sam Balsara: “The fact that the TRP rating from the exposed list and the full list are similar is very reassuring. The fact that senior people from the industry are now going to be actively involved is going to lead to an even stonger system.” At the meeting, the ISA was represetnted by Procter & Gamble chairman Bharat Patel, who is also the chairman of the managing committee of ISA, Mr Arun Adhikari of Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) and Mr Ravikant of Telco.