Photo: IC

It's not unusual to see a widely criticized TV series rank right at the top of audience ratings in China. This may be why, on March 8, Zhang Zequn, a deputy member of the National People's Congress and a host on China Central Television, and Ouyang Changlin, a member of the National Committee of the CPPCC and director of Hunan Satellite Television, took time out during China's two sessions to point out the serious TV ratings fraud that exists in the country.

"Buying ratings, bribing sample viewers and controlling the remote" were the key issues that came under attack by industry insiders in the discussions that followed.

This is not the first time that TV ratings fraud has become the center of discussion. The People's Daily delved into the issue with three in-depth reports back in 2010 and individual producers have reported data pointing to fraud among third party companies on numerous occasions.

To help combat the situation and raise standards, in March 2014 the Standardization Administration of the People's Republic of China issued the Television Audience Measurement Guidelines.

Yet still the problem remains.

The spread of fraud

An investigative report released by Tencent on Friday revealed that as early as 2010, TV broadcast stations in the Yangtze River Delta faced serious issues with fraudulent TV ratings, especially in Shanghai. Yet this hard-hit area has been gradually replaced by other cities and areas as the trend expands from south to north, and from first-tier cities to second- and third-tier cities.

In China most satellite TV stations are provincial, and most audiences prefer tuning into their own local stations. For example, most Beijingers tend to watch Beijing Satellite TV (BTV). As such each local station should rank towards the top when it comes to local ratings.

According to the Tencent report, however, Beijing ratings experienced an unusual phenomenon in April of 2014 as BTV was kicked out of the top 10. After a month-long examination of tracking data, insiders came to the conclusion that local sample audiences may have become polluted.

On the same day that Zhang and Ouyang pointed out the problems stations were facing from fraudulent ratings, Anhui Satellite TV lost to a second-tier satellite TV station when it came to audience ratings in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province. In addition, to the shock of many industry insiders, Hefei audience ratings also revealed that this small local station from a remote area had even beaten out Hunan Satellite Television, an extremely popular station nationwide.

"I had only heard about fraud in TV ratings before, but now it's not uncommon to see unusual fluctuations in TV ratings. Previously, people used to only suspect the data from the top ranked TV stations, but now ratings data at second-tier stations has started to encounter problems as well," an industry insider that wished to remain anonymous told Tencent.

Su Xiao, the general manager of movie studio SMG Pictures, revealed that national ratings for 33 cities broke past 40 percent on February 11, 2014, a shocking number considering that the Spring Festival Gala - one of China's most highly watched events every year - that was broadcast on January 30th that year in over 200 cities only pulled in a 30.98 percent in audience ratings.

"Data pollution is sever, almost ridiculous," Su said.

All about the money

"Now that advertisement revenue relies on TV ratings and television stations use ratings to evaluate shows, it's all become interest driven. TV ratings data has become polluted," said Zhang.

However, Ouyang pointed out another factor behind these fraudulent ratings is the way contracts between production companies and TV stations work. In most cases production companies need to sign agreements promising that their shows will reach a certain level in the ratings. If shows do not perform as promised, then TV stations don't have to pay the full amount for the show.

Pushed to ensure high ratings for their shows, some studios turn to companies that can falsify ratings for them.

In 2012, Wang Jianfeng, president of film company Zhongshi Fengde, made public evidence such as texts, e-mails and contracts showing the behavior of some of these false-data companies.

According to Wang, the company approached him with the promise that they could push his shows into the top 10 in national ratings. The company even improved the ratings of his shows in two local cities as proof that they could do what they claimed.

Wang reported the company to CSM Media Research, the company behind all audience ratings in China at the time, yet CSM's only response was "to wait for further notice."

Manipulating ratings is actually quite easy.

CSM has only 61.1 thousand sample households in the entire mainland, as such its easy for companies to track these households down and convince them to change their viewing habits by holding promotional events for shows in their neighborhood, or even just giving them gifts directly.

For instance, since there are only 500 sample households in Beijing, all companies have to do is get 10 families to tune into a certain show to raise that show's ratings by 0.5.

Some have proposed introducing legislation to make falsifying data illegal, while others feel that getting rid of CSM's ratings monopoly is the answer.

According to one industry insider, Nielson Media Research, which left China in 2009, has been working to return to China since 2012. Currently the company has established sample audiences in 15 major cities and is looking to reach nationwide coverage by 2016, when it will officially announce its return.