As announced at a joint conference of TMI and Kantar on February 27 last year, it was planned to expand the TV audience's measuring panel throughout the country (excluding the occupied territories). The mentioned information can be found at the link: https://www.tmi.ge/en/news/35

However, the World Covid Pandemic, which started in 2020, has changed the timing of the project. An official letter on this issue is published by Keld Nielsen, CEO of Kantar, which is offered below:

”TMI in partnership with Kantar decided to take the TV Audience Measurement in Georgia on the next level by expanding the TV Panel to include both urban and rural areas and to be the true pioneers in implementing the next-generation People Meter 7, that has become the chosen technology in UK, Netherlands and Slovakia among other markets considering it at the moment.

During the setup phase in Georgia, we, as well as the rest of the world, have faced the unprecedented circumstances due to COVID-19 and Brexit affecting the delays in hardware supply and causing the changes in the technology implementation timelines.

Both, Kantar and TMI, are putting their best efforts in order to adopt the new robust IT infrastructure, install the new People Meters in the panellist homes and to apply the new weighting parameters to the data in order to deliver the enhanced Audience Data to our devoted clients in Georgia already in 2021. We truly hope there will be no additional reasons for any further delays triggered by force-majeure conditions.

We would like to express our gratitude and we do highly appreciate the understanding from Georgian industry in these extraordinary times”.