By Raju Vernekar
Mumbai, Oct 9:
The Mumbai Police on Thursday arrested four persons in connection with a Television Rating Points (TRP) manipulation racket and remanded them to the Crime branch custody till Friday.
The offence has been registered with the Kandivali police in North Mumbai and further investigation is on. The police recovered Rs 20 lakh cash from one of the accused in addition to Rs. 8.5 lakh from his bank locker. The arrests were made under sections 409 and 420 of IPC.
The arrested persons include: owners of two Marathi channels and two former employees of Hansa Research Private Limited, Vidyavihar in North East Mumbai. They have been arrested for inflating the viewership figure.
TRP is a tool to judge which TV programmes are viewed the most and also indicates the viewers’ choice and popularity of a particular channel. Mumbai Police Commissioner Param Bir Singh told reporters that “Republic TV channel”, was also involved in the “false TRP” racket. The bank accounts of these channels are being probed and people responsible for the TRP racket are being summoned for further investigation. We suspect that a similar racket is being operated in other parts of the country, Singh said.
TRP is calculated on the basis of TV channel viewership in a confidential set of households.
Those involved in the racket would bribe people in these households and ask them to keep some channels switched on even when they weren’t watching or not at home.
The racket was unearthed when Hansa Research Private Limited, located at Vidyavihar in North East Mumbai, filed a complaint of the TRP racket, following which an offence was registered. During the investigation it came to light that some former employees of the Hansa agency were involved in compromising the data and they were sharing it with some television companies. It was also revealed that these persons had manipulated the sampling metering services by inducing the barometer users through periodical payments to watch particular TV channels. Many people in whose homes these barometers have been installed, have accepted that they were getting monetary benefit for keeping their TV sets on even when they did not watch it.
Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) is an official agency under the Union Information Ministry and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). It powers Rs 32000 crore Indian TC advertisement industry by providing sharp insights. It has installed over 32,000 barometers across the county to monitor programs and based on statistical metrics it awards ratings to various TV channels.
Reacting to allegations, Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief of the Republic TV channel, said the Mumbai police chief made false claims against “Republican TV” as the channel had questioned him in the Sushant Singh Rajput case investigation. He said that his channel will file a criminal defamation case against the Mumbai police commissioner. BARC has not mentioned the channel even in a single complaint, he said, adding that Singh should issue an apology or get ready to face the defamation suit.
