The recently concluded series between India and SA had more than its share of ups and downs. The Mike Deness controversy not only saw the Indian team's fortunes dipping but also advertisers losing, as viewers deserted cricket in the 3rd 'Unofficial' Test match. The third match, which was being touted as the decider of the series after India managed a respectable draw in the second, turned out to be not so profitable for the advertisers as viewer interest dipped. But as the spots had been bought well in advance they could just sit and watch as the Indian team and their spots got plundered.

A look at the Avg. TVRs (TG: Males, 9 cities, 15-44 yrs, Sec ABC) for the 3 test matches played reveals that the first 2 matches attracted audience in huge numbers and in fact after the Indian players were slapped with penalties on the last day of the second test, TVR touched 3.3%, the second highest for any day in the series. The first match too delivered an Avg TRP of around 3 % even as India got plundered in 4 days.

But when Mike Deness struck, the audience deserted cricket despite the channel and the programmers trying to keep the enthusiasm going. The 3rd match delivered Avg TVRs of just 1.7 % over 5 days, a drop of more than 40%. In fact a look at the GRPs added for the each of the test match shows that the first match, which lasted all of 4 days, delivered more GRPs than the 3rd one, which, though unofficial, went on for 5 days. Clearly, advertisers who bought spots on the last match lost a lot of audience, courtesy Mr Deness.

To quantify the loss lets look the price paid by advertisers for the spots. Market sources reveal that ESPN sold some spots as high as USD 8000 per 30 secs though the average price being touted is around USD 5000 per 30 secs.

For instance if an advertiser bought 10 spots on all days of all matches, the cost calculations would work out something on the following lines:

		Match1	Match2	Match3
1	No of spots per day	10	10	10
2	TVR per day (Avg for the match)	2.98	2.98	1.77
3	GRP per day ( 1 x 2)	29.83	29.78	17.72
4	Total GRP ( 2 x No of days per match)	119.30	148.90	88.60
5	Avg spot duration (Assumption) Secs	20	20	20
6	Cost per 30 secs (Assumed = USD 5000)	240,000	240,000	240,000
7	Total secs (1 x 5 x no of days)	8,000*	1,000	1,000
8	No of 30 sconders	27	33	33
9	Total Cost (6 x 8) Rs	6,400,000	8,000,000	8,000,000
10	CPRP (9 / 4) Rs	53,646	53,727	90,293
			Change	68.02%

*Match 1 lasted only 4 days

As evident, an advertiser would end up incurring a CPRP almost 70% higher in the last match as compared with the previous 2 matches. Now, that is a huge difference !!