Need for a fullproof methord of calculating TRP's

Considering the huge sums of money spend on Television Advertising in India and as it is growing day by day the advertisers are becoming more and more caucious regarding the same. Also the prices charged by the channels for a property is rising and hence it is very essential that the agency knows its target group and matches it with the expected TG in that property. For that the Television rating system should be able to give a fair idea of the same but unfortunately in India this has been a huge problem and we have not been successfull to capture the same.
The information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry today constituted a seven-member committee, headed by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) General Secretary Amit Mitra, to suggest measures for an effective Television Rating Point (TRP) system.
The mandate of the committee is to address issues related to accuracy, accountability, transparency and objectivity in the generation of TRPs. It would also examine as to how misleading TRPs can be and it can not only impact broadcasters and advertisers but more importantly the viewing public. This is a very huge problem because the system in which the TRP is calculated today is not at all full proof and it needs some drastic changes. For those who do not know how TRP is calculated is given as under.
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 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 programme 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.
Presently, INTAM (Indian Television Audience Measurement) is the only electronic rating agency functioning in India. INTAM uses two methodologies for calculating TRP. First is frequency monitoring, in which 'people meters' mentioned above are installed in sample homes and these electronic gadgets continuously record data about the channel watched by the family members. 'People meter' is a costly equipment, which is imported from abroad. It reads the frequencies of channels, which are later, decoded into the name of the channels and the agency prepares a national data on the basis of its sample homes readings. But there is a drawback in the technique, as cable operators frequently change the frequencies of the different channels before sending signals to the homes. It may be very misleading to read a channel according to a particular frequency even if the down linking frequency is same all over India. Also the number of families covered through this is quite less which is because of the huge cost of instauling these machines.
Second technique is more reliable and relatively new to India. In picture matching technique people meter continuously records a small portion of the picture that is being watched on that particular television set. Along with this agency also records all the channels' data in the form of small picture portion. Data collected from the sample homes is later on matched with the main data bank to interpret the channel name. And this way national rating is produced.
But the latter methord also has its own drawback. Hence there is a huge need for a new rating system which takes into consideration more number of factors.