How the Channels TRP rating is being done right now is a big question if really the channels are getting such viewership. Lets check the current trend.
Currently BARC is using its own TV viewership STBs or Meters to monitor the sampling data for the Television audience monitoring. But the meters are very few and are very expensive.
To overcome this, STB vendors are coming up with the hybrid models which will have reverse path in the form of Wifi or wired internet.
There are two such solution in hybrid STBs:
To monitor viewership, an embed audio watermarking is inserted to each tv channel. This watermarking will be inaudible to the viewer but it will carry the detailed information of the channel name, time of telecast etc.
This watermark data will be extracted by the STB and transmitted back to the BARC server.
Since the number of hybrid STBs are increasing so it will give meaningful pattern of viewership.
The other solution is creating a specialized software wherein the logs of each channel watched for every hour will be created and stored in the .txt format in the hybrid STB. As and when the reverse path is available, the STBs will send the logs to the server of the MSO.
