India TRP Fixing: BARC Suspends Ratings Of News Channels For 3 Months!
The technical committee of BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) suspended on 15th October 2020 the TRP (Television Rating Point) ratings for all English, Hindi and regional news channels in India for 12 weeks or three months during which the Weekly ratings for individual news channels will not be released while weekly ratings by language and state continue. The suspension period, as reports say, would be used entirely by BARC to completely overhaul and reorganize its rule sets for calculating TRP numbers, and would therefore try to make the rating agency’s statistics of the world’s largest television believable. and reliable Up to this point, the rules were based on the viewing patterns of a sample of 40,000 households or 180,000 viewers across the country through the installation of a people meter on their televisions, to determine the standards and patterns of nearly 200 million TV-watching households or about 836 million viewers in India. The president of the Association of Newscasters (NBA) has welcomed the decision as a step in the right direction.
This decision comes in the wake of TRP fixing by some news channels, mainly Republic TV. BARC recently filed a complaint to this effect with the Mumbai Police through Hansa Research Group. The complaint alleged that these channels are bribing families whose televisions have meters installed to collect audience data to tune in to particular channels continuously. Consequently, the Mumbai Police Commissioner held a press conference in Mumbai to announce the start of investigations to probe the channels that are allegedly trying to manipulate TRP data for more advertising revenue.
This development was also preceded by some stormy months during which some news channels had launched media lawsuits to turn the apparent suicide of rising movie star Sushant Singh Rajput into a murder conspiracy and consequently campaigns of “investigation” to howl about bleeding the ‘defendants’ along with smear campaigns to smear various movie celebrities allegedly associated with the charges of ‘murder’ and drug abuse. The Maharashtra government and the Mumbai police were also vilified in the campaigns. Three top-tier investigative agencies were staged to file charge sheets and jail the ‘defendants’, mostly named in media trials, all for apparent political gain. At the moment, their investigations are almost exhausted, none of them can justify the angle of the murder. In the month of October 2020, all the major producers in the Hindi film industry, Bollywood, filed a petition in the Delhi High Court complaining about the media lawsuits and slander campaigns of two prominent national news channels, Republic and Times Now. Meanwhile, watching or not watching news channels has become an existential crisis for ordinary people in the country.
Indeed, since the Hindu nationalist NDA government came to power in India in 2014 and its aggressive push for a Hindu nation, Indian news channels and media outlets have been increasingly polarizing along ideological lines, with some pushing agenda oriented. and communal campaigns unabashedly while the others fight with their neutral journalistic supports. Fake news and social media manipulations have also been disturbing developments during the same period.
Under the liberal push of Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government in 1991, private international television broadcasting players were allowed to participate in the Indian broadcasting scene which had hitherto been dominated by the national broadcaster Doordarshan. So cable satellite entertainment channels had started to appear since the early 1990s and news channels had started to proliferate since the mid 1990s. Fierce competition thus began with the proliferation of channels fighting for their respective audience segments. Audience research had thus become a topic of paramount importance.
TAM or Television Audience Measurement, a private company to measure the television audience in India, started operations from the mid-nineties and was soon joined by INTAM or Indian National Television Audience Measurement by ORG-MARG. The journey of competition and TRP measurement had always been a careless journey with most of the channels contesting the statistical figures making their own claims and some of them launching bitter legal battles against the agencies. In view of this, the Government of India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting began in 2008 deliberations to build a more credible and comprehensive rating agency, trying to involve all stakeholders in the business. After various reports from various committees and recommendations from TRAI (Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India), the concept of BARC was formalized in 2010 as a joint industry body founded by the stakeholders: the broadcasters, advertisers and advertising agencies. and media, and started its operations from 2013-14. In a historic move in 2015, TAM and INTAM merged with BARC. However, recent developments and various charges/indictments in the past years have once again shown that a comprehensive and reliable rating agency is still a distant dream.
While audience research and rating for competing broadcast groups cannot be eliminated, TRP analysis for news channels can definitely be abolished altogether, leaving news channels to focus on good, unbiased content. to gain the respective hearing. This would also free sober news channels from unnecessary ruthless warfare or controversial statistics or manipulation by the PRT. In addition, the news is very close to physical reality, informing viewers about developments in all fields of activity, and any manipulation of the content of the news, making it biased, false or simply unreliable would be an absolute disservice to citizens. . For this reason, we also join the many voices that are already on the rise, for a total stoppage of the TRP system for news channels. The suspension is very welcome, but it has to be the precursor to more drastic action.