How real is Tam/Intam rating?

new delhi: in the aftermath of the anonymous leak of people meter homes in mumbai, television rating agencies tam and intam havedecided to shift the existing 600-odd homes enrolled for obtaining the audience profile and television rate points (trps). indian broadcasting federation has called an emergency meet of its members in mumbai on september 14 and has asked ac nielsen's tam and org-marg's intam to attend the meeting. but the issue of possible rigging in trps continues to bother the broadcasters with many of them demanding accountability in service from tam and intam. it seems a fraction of the socio economic a category was included in mumbai list and many metres were not changed for over five years. as a subscription fee, both tam and intam garner about rs 100 crore each year from broadcasters and media buyers. big broadcasters pay close to rs 80 lakh to tam and intam as annual subscription fees to obtain weekly trps. tam has written a letter to broadcasters about the leak of mumbai households and steps taken by them to find the culprit. the steps are: whether anybody has contacted existing panel members to falsify tv viewing data, a review of panel members and enhancing the security systems. org-marg president ashok das said that "there is a vested interest" behind this entire operation. intam has already started to shift people meter in homes that matches with the leaked anonymous list," he added. broadcasters are a worried lot since media buyers may shift to other rating options after the breach. "it is clearly emerging that we were provided research data which was questionable," said sandeep goyal, ceo zee networks. goyal said that zee group could have lost huge amount of money because of the possible error in data. one-and-a-half year back it had nine out of the top 10 television programmes and now has just one programme in the top 10 list. "i don't question the system, but its operation part. we need to have some kind of accountability since we pay a lot of money as subscription fees," said g krishnan, executive director tv today. "all the 600-odd mumbai homes have to be monitored by research staff of tam and intam to prevent households being corrupted," he added. a fmcg company official said that they will reduce their television campaign and shift focus to other media options for the time being. "it's a big setback. we have asked our media buyer to go slow in buying bulk airtime," said a fmcg major. likewise, a car company too is to reduce their campaign strategy for tv. a section of leading media buyers said that although they exercised other measurements options to trps, they did not believe audience profile choice. "it was shocking to see the profile of homes. mumbai was not represented according to its social profile," said a media buyer. this has increased their worst fears of whether trps were subjected to fudging all the time. the immediate worry is whether the leak in rosters of tam and intam is the end or just the beginning to spread to other cities.