TV Pulse 2005, the annual research initiative put together by the Joint Industry Body (JIB) and Tam Media, series continues with the paper - Reel Pointer - A Tool to predict ratings for Blockbuster movies on TV.
This paper was contributed by Lodestar Media - Winner of the Best Paper award at Emmies - 2004.
- Devdas acquired for Rs 12 crores, delivers only 3.7 TRPs
- Humraaz delivers 12.0 TRPs, surpassing Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham‘s 8.1 TRPs
The challenge was to bridge the information gap in the current TV programming scenario where blockbuster movies are among the biggest viewership/revenue genres but data to evaluate and price them does not exist. The aim was to predict TRPs of blockbuster films on TV and set buying benchmarks.
METHODOLOGY: REGRESSION MODELING
TRPs of past blockbuster movies modelled against factors that would help predict future performance.
Arriving at the factors:
- Box-office Collections - a quantifiable measure of viewer appeal and a sum of all the qualitative factors like star cast, music score, storyline and director that affect a film.
- Recency - the interval between the time the movie was released to the time it was shown on TV. It was calculated as the number of days from release to telecast date.
- Repeats - A movie that had been repeated too often was likely to lose its appeal hence assumed inversely related to TV rating.
- Promos - Directly responsive to viewership, the number of promos had to be taken into account.
- Channel of telecast - The cable operator plays a role in deciding whether a C&S home can receive a TV channel or not. Connectivity, in turn, affects a film‘s viewership.
- Daypart - TRP was affected by the daypart or time of telecast (early prime, prime, late prime...)
- Day - Weekends were associated with blockbusters. A film telecast on a Saturday night was likely to get more viewer interest than one shown on a Tuesday afternoon. However Zee scheduled its blockbusters on Thursdays to capitalise on weaker competitive programming.
- Opposite viewing - The impact of competitive programming also had to be taken into account. A blockbuster movie scheduled on a channel at prime time may lose more viewers to programmes on other channels than a non prime-time film.
