Why in News ?

Recently Mumbai police busted a racket of fraudulent manipulation of Television Rating Points (TRPs). They have been found to be indulging in malpractices. Television Rating Points And BARC facing issues with the absence of law.

• Issue : Police are looking into a scam about manipulation of TRPs by rigging the devices used by the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India, which has the mandate to measure television audience in India.

What is TRP ?

• TRPs represent how many people, from which socio-economic categories, watched which channels for how much time during a particular period.
• This could be for an hour, a day, or even a week
• India follows the international standard of one minute.
• The data is usually made public every week.

Why it is important and How it is Calculated?

• Better ratings would promote a programme while poor ratings will discourage a programme.
• Incorrect ratings will lead to production of programmes which may not be really popular while good programmes may be left out.
• TRPs are the main currency for advertisers to decide which channel to advertise on by calculating the cost-per-rating-point (CPRP).
• Calculation :
  • A device called People’s Meter is attached to the TV set of some of the randomly selected viewers as sample data.
  • These sample data represent the entire households.
  • BARC uses its advanced BAR-O-meters to calculate the TRP.
  • These devices are installed in the homes of randomly selected audiences(from both rural and urban areas).
  • Through this meter, all information on TV channels or programs (such as time and duration of viewing) is recorded on that particular day.
  • After that, a period of 30 days or 7 days (in case of BARC) is taken on average to know the viewership status.
  • BARC India uses a device called the Watermark embedders that embed the audio content of each program with watermark code.
  • Both the device i.e, BAR-O-meter and Watermark embedder helps to measure TV usage, TV stations, and individual viewing, when and where it is viewed, which age group has viewed, etc

What is BARC ?

• It is an industry body jointly owned by advertisers, ad agencies, and broadcasting companies, represented by
  • The Indian Society of Advertisers
  • Indian Broadcasting Foundation
  • Advertising Agencies Association of India.
• Though it was created in 2010, the I&B Ministry notified the Policy Guidelines for Television Rating Agencies in India on January 10, 2014 and registered BARC in July 2015 under these guidelines, to carry out television ratings in India.

How these TRP can Manipulate ?

• Broadcasters can find the households where devices are installed, they can either bribe them to watch their channels, or ask cable operators or multi-system operators to ensure their channel is available as the landing page when the TV is switched on.
• Broadcasters can target these households where the TRP calculating device installed.

Challenges Raised

• 2018 consultation paper BY TRAI said
  • One of the biggest challenges has been the absence of any specific law through which the agents/ suspects involved in panel tampering/infiltration could be penalised
  • BARC has filed FIRs in various police stations against the agents/ suspects involved in panel tampering/infiltration its efforts to mitigate panel tampering/ infiltration have been hampered due to absence of any legal framework.
• Earlier the I&B Ministry had raised concerns that BARC was under-reporting viewership of Doordarshan, and floated the idea of chip-based activity logs through all set-top boxes. The idea was finally rejected.

Source : The Hindu

Topic

Prelims : TRP

GS III : Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology and issues relating to intellectual property rights

Current Affairs Compilation : 9 October 2020