By Venkatesh Raghavan
Mumbai: Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh recently named Republic TV and two Marathi channels in connection with the TRPs rigging scam. Rigging involves paying money to viewers to keep the channel on for hours even if there is no one watching. This helps record high TRPs and attract advertisers to sponsor the channel program.
The two Marathi channels named by the Commissioner were Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema. The FIR registered with the police makes no mention of Republic TV. It specifies that India Today as one of the channels that indulge in such malpractices. Joint Commissioner Milind Bharambe however, disclosed that interrogation of the accused in connection with the rigging has thrown up the name of Republic TV besides Fakt Marathi and Box Cinema.
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Republic TV finds its name in the accusations for pillorying the image of the Mumbai police and the Sena government in actor Sushant Rajput’s death case. However, there is still scope for clarity on to what extent the fortunes of these channels affected the purse strings of the companies who acted as sponsors and advertised with them. Mumbai viewers are only a small portion of the pan India viewership sample taken out by Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC).
A backgrounder on the rigging issue related to manipulation of Television Rating Points (TRPS) resulting in heavy loss of revenues to companies that rely on this information to place their advertisements is the spate of events that were offset when the Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh proactively sought a detailed report on the matter. TRPs are calculated on the basis of devices supplied by the BARC to a representative sample size of television viewers. The organization has the privilege and mandate television audience strengths pan India.
Elaborating on the concept of TRPs, it gives a clear picture of the number of people from each diverse socio-economic category that watch any given channel for a specified period of time, be it a week or a day. The information gathered is made available in the public domain on a weekly basis.
Now comes the relationship between TRP information and how misrepresenting it leads to heavy losses to the companies or sponsors who wish to advertise on the basis of the data supplied to them. In the event the TRP ratings are misrepresented and deliberately manipulated by any rating agency in exchange for a monetary consideration or bribe, the corporate entity or sponsor that chooses to invest in advertising on a particular channel will end up losing money without any real benefits as they have been misguided and the channel of their choice does not have sufficient number of viewers. The ratings that are provided to each television channel are actually a measure of the magnitude of a given sample viewing the channel.
The provision of incorrect or misleading data on TRPs besides causing loss to the advertisers, also stands the risk of killing the prospects of a good program and poor programs surviving on the TV screen without purpose. Media study report supplied in the previous year indicated a lot size of 78,700 crore of which a miniscule number is really tested for the purpose of deciding the TRPs. The authorized body BARC constitutes representatives of Indian Society of Advertisers, Indian Broadcasting Foundation and the Advertising Agencies Association of India. The body received the official government sanction in 2015 to carry out the task of ascertaining and publicizing television ratings pan India.
To demonstrate how small the sample size is in comparison to the lot size of 78,700 crore, on records the BARC provides monitoring devices to more 45,000 households. The information gathering process also requires proactive participation from the viewers who are required to press their viewer ID button, meaning each member of the household. The sample though small is expected to be representative of the television viewing population in the country.
Now comes the rigging part and why this menace can cause so much damage. Those who wish to rig can exercise two options. They can target and bribe viewers using this device after finding their list. Alternately, a less tedious route can be used. They can bribe cable operators to ensure their channel is always the landing page, meaning it appears by default whenever the television is switched on.
The reason why rigging is easy is that the sample of TV viewers is small and the size of television audience viewing a particular channel is still smaller. Let us say a size less than 0.3% of the sample view a particular channel, a small manipulation like say 15 additional viewers ascribed to a channel viewership can make a huge difference in the TRP ratings of the particular channel.
There have been repeated complaints registered with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) about irregularities and malpractices that are taking place in coming out with TRP ratings for various channels. There were also complaints about the tacit involvement of the BARC in favouring such manipulations. However, till date there is very little action on ground barring these recent arrests.
