TAM is normal business for India.

NDTV has filed a suit against TAM ( Television Audience Measurement ) Media Research, a 50:50 joint venture company between The Nielsen Co and Kantar Media Research, in the New York Supreme Court asking for $1.4 billion in damages and hundreds of millions more for interference and breach of fiduciary duty. NDTV is alleging that TAM, which is a monopoly business in India, was guilty of tampering with television viewership data in favor of companies which bribed their employees in India. ET, 2 July. In a 194 page lawsuit NDTV says that it confronted Nielsen with evidence of data manipulation including taped meetings with TAM employees in India. In meetings and through emails Nielsen apparently admitted that its data was being manipulated and promised to fix it by 1 July. NDTV has filed the case in New York because both Nielsen and Kantar are based there and are guilty of not investing in the India business with the result that there are not enough People Meters to get an accurate picture of viewership. The TV industry in India is worth Rs 350 billion of which Rs 150 billion is from advertising. What really hurts is that foreign companies, which behave impeccably in their home countries, resort to underhand methods in India because all Indian businesses run on a combination of bribery ( usually politicians and civil servants to obtain land or licenses ) cartelisation, fictitious balance sheets, under or over invoicing and ripping off the Indian consumer. Service providers actively connive in cheating the Indian subscriber. If a channel has few viewers it will not receive any advertising revenue and will have to become a free channel to attract viewers. Service providers help to hide such figures by an especially pernicious practice called " bouquets " in which several channels are bundled together and the subscriber is forced to pay for the whole lot if she wants to watch just one of those channels. Very often Hindi and English channels are bundled together. In this way they make it impossible to know how many viewers each channel has so the channel is able to charge viewers as well as get advertising revenue. Thus service providers help to cheat both viewers and advertisers. The telecom regulator TRAI made it mandatory for all service providers to offer individual choice of channels so they suddenly hiked prices from Rs 5 to Rs 20 to force viewers to opt for " bouquets ". This is where TAM comes in. If TAM publishes accurate viewership figures a lot of channels will be forced to become free. Hence the bribes to TAM employees in India. But, surely, it is the government's duty to stamp out crime and protect Indian consumers? A top official in the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry, who wants to remain anonymous, said," A lot of people have been raising concerns because of which we are looking at TAM very carefully. We will soon take some action." TAM employees are not the only ones with greased palms, are they?