What exactly is TRP, and how does it influence TV serials?

TRP is Television Rating Point. It is basically a tool for measuring television watching habits of the audience. It is measured by placing something called people’s meter in a few households that act as a sample size.

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 a 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 program 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.

People’s meter is like a set up box but smaller in size that has an additional remote. When a person turns on the TV, he/she needs to press the viewing button, age, and gender and watch whichever channel they want to watch. This way data of what the person is watching and for how long is recorded. There are many such households wherein people’s meter is set and the data is collected. This way of monitoring audience’s television watching habit is called frequency monitoring.

Before knowing how TRP is calculated here are a few terms that one needs to know.

Reach: Percentage of target audience reached. 

Frequency: Number of times the targeted audience watching the program.

GRP: Gross rating point. To calculate TRP, we calculate GRP using the following formula: GRP = Reach (%) * Frequency. 

Percentage of target audience: What percentage of your target audience is watching the program out of all the viewers of the program.

TRP is calculated by the following formula: TRP = GRP* Percentage of the target audience.

Coming to the second part of the query, a show with a high TRP rating will increase the popularity of the show, channel and also the revenue as many products come forward to sponsor the show or pay the channel to air their ads.