Cable digitisation much slower than government claims

“Only 59 per cent of digitization has been achieved in the four metros as per the first ever independent survey of the extent of digitization in the four metros was conducted by Television Street Maps for MxMIndia,” writes Pradyuman Maheshwari in MxM India . The figures vary sharply from the claims on the progress of digitization made by the government.

MxM India commissioned Television Street Maps (TSM), a channel distribution monitoring service covering over 1500 headends across 675+ cities/towns, to conduct the study.

The following tables (courtesy MxM India) tell the story:

The date for the switchover from analogue to digital transmission in the four metros was first fixed as 30 June, 2012. Then it was shifted at the last-minute to 31 October, 2012.

With less than a week to go for the revised deadline, the MxM-TSM assessment of the situation on the ground will send alarm bells ringing at both broadcasters and advertisers offices.

A week ago, the audience measurement service, TAM, acceded to a request by broadcasters for the suspension of the publishing of audience measurement for a two-month period. The broadcasters, perhaps, anticipated that the switchover was not going as smoothly as was claimed by the MIB.

“The broadcasting industry is of the view that during the transition process from analogue signals to digital environment, there could have been discrepancies in TAM’s reporting of data, which could have had serious implications, particularly for the broadcasters, not only in terms of finance, but also in terms of credibility,” a joint statement by TAM, Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Advertising Agencies Association of India, (AAAI) and ISA (Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) said last week .

If the situation is as bad as the MxM-TSM study says it is, large sections of the four metros will go TV dark on 31 October – which means that advertisers will lose large numbers of eyeballs in the critical Diwali festival season.

Will their be a scramble by consumers of analogue services when they discover, on 1 November, that their idiot box no longer delivers pictures for them to see? We’ll have to wait and watch.