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It was a historic day for the people of Bihar, but a black day for the Indian television media covering elections in that state. Barring CNN-IBN, no other television channel seemed to have got their numbers right on November 8, the day when results of the five-phase Bihar polls were declared. Most TV channels, including Prannoy Roy's NDTV, were giving the National Democratic Alliance a thumbs up, when it was the Grand Alliance of the JD(U), RJD and Congress that was winning the battle on the ground. The final tally: NDA 58; Grand Alliance 178.
What went wrong? Here's what people in the know, who were part of counting day coverage, on Sunday said: Most channels subscribe to data provided by market research agency Nielsen. The latter typically has people stationed at every counting booth, collecting leads after every round is verified by the returning officer and put up a board. Leads on the board are then conveyed to a central call centre, which is then given to all TV channels. Channels are connected to Nielsen's servers and have individual software to process the raw data received from the call centre, which is then quickly pushed on air.
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Why CNN-IBN got it right is because the channel did not depend entirely on Nielsen numbers. Radhakrishnan Nair, managing editor, CNN-IBN, said, "We have an extensive network of reporters and stringers from our regional channel ETV Bihar, who were deployed to give us minute-by-minute updates of what was happening on the ground. This helped us in putting out accurate numbers."
CNN-IBN was also the earliest in calling the elections accurately, precisely, at 10.03 am on Sunday morning. NDTV, in contrast, had to hastily re-calculate its numbers following an early mess-up in declaring the results in NDA's favour.
A producer with a national news channel said, "There was an error that crept in as the initial rounds which NDTV processed was based on postal ballots. This gave the wrong picture of the NDA leading, when that wasn't the case. Their speed proved to be their undoing."
On Sunday, Roy issued a clarification saying: "On every counting day, like today, all news channels get data from one agency. Again, a very globally respected agency. This morning, the first data that came in to all news channels was completely wrong. Our trend analysis was based on this data like it has been for 35 years - it's never been wrong so far."
How TV channels got the picture wrong | Business Standard Mobile Website
