Television: India
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Dubbed films, serials
Ban on telecast violates Competition Act
At a time when linguistic jingoism is on the rise, the Supreme Court in a significant ruling said anyone attempting to stall exhibition of dubbed films or dubbed serials in the name of protecting a language would be guilty of violating the Competition Act, 2002.
The bone of contention before the SC was the telecast of TV serial `Mahabharat“ dubbed from Hindi to Bengali on different TV channels of Bengal. This was unpalatable to the Eastern India Motion Picture Association (EIMPA) and the Coordination Com mittee of Artists and Technicians of West Bengal Film and Television Investors.
EIMPA and the Coordination Committee felt telecast of serials produced in other languages but dubbed in Bengali would adversely affect producers, artists and technicians in Bengal. They apprehended that it would deter production of such serials in Bengali.Both wrote letters to channels asking them to stop telecast of `Mahabharat' dubbed in Bengali citing “interest of healthy growth of film and TV industry in Bengal“.
They reminded channel owners of a 13-year-long convention in Bengal not to telecast any serial produced in another language and dubbed in Bengali. The threat was also extended to two TV channels that if the telecast was not stopped, their chan nels would face non-cooperation from EIMPA and the Coordination Committee. Telecast of the serial was stopped after a few episodes.
The Competition Commission of India, on a complaint by the owner of one of the channels, found the threat anti-competitive. However, the Competition Appellate Tribunal held that the threat did not throttle competition.The CCI moved the SC against the tribunal's decision.
A bench of Justices A K Sikri and A M Sapre agreed with the CCI and said that the boycott threat aimed to prevent the two channels from pursuing their legitimate commercial activities.
Licensing of TV channels
The Times of India, Aug 12 2016
Govt cancelled licences of 73 TV channels & 24 FM stations
The information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry has cancelled the “permission“ of 73 TV channels, 24 FM channels and nine newspapers periodicals for violations.
In response to a question in Rajya Sabha, minister of state for I&B Rajyavardhan Rathore said, “For violating the provisions of uplinking guidelines, the permission of 73 TV channels has been cancelled till date." These include Just TV, Khaas, Mohua Punjabi, Mohua Telegu, Vision Entertainment and Key TV among others whose licences were cancelled be cause the channels were not operationalised within the stipulated period of a year. Others like Focus NE, Focus Haryana, STV Haryana, Lemon TV were yanked off air because the home ministry denied security clearance. At present, 892 private satellite TV channels are registered in the country. The ministry has also revoked the licences of 24 FM channels of six private broadcasters for violation of provisions of the grant of permission agreement (GOPA) signed by them with the government.The ministry has granted permission to 42 private channels and 196 community radio stations in the country.
The ministry , through the Registrar of Newspapers of India, has cancelled the registration of nine newspapers and periodicals.
The ministry is also working towards tightening norms for the print media.“Realising the need to update and revise the legal mechanism in print sector, owing to phenomenal growth after liberalisation of government policies, I&B ministry has initiated the Press and Registration of Books and Publications (PRBP) Bill with a view to replace the existing PRB Act, 1867, the minister said.
AIR and DD to boost signals in border areas
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: The Centre plans to counter foreign broadcasts across border areas by strengthening the signals of All India Radio and Doordarshan.High power FM transmitters are being installed at 12 locations, including Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, J&K and Tripura among others.
“In addition to this, schemes for setting up of 10kW FM transmitters at six locations specially providing coverage along the India-Nepal border have also been approved. These transmitters are to be installed at Sashastra Seema Bal sites, minister of state for I&B Rajyavardhan Rathore said in response to a Rajya Sabha question.
1-day ban on news channel for `jeopardising' security
The government directed Hindi news channel NDTV India in Nov 2016 to go off air for 24 hours starting from midnight on November 9 for allegedly jeopardising national security while covering the terror attack on Pathankot airbase in January .
This is the first time that a broadcaster has been penalised over coverage of a terror attack. According to the information and broadcasting ministry order, the channel's anchor and reporter had revealed sensitive information during the coverage of the attack that could have been picked up by terrorists in the airbase and their handlers had the potential to “cause massive harm not only to national security but also to civilians and defence personnel“.
While the operation to flush out the terrorists was still on, the channel had disclosed information on ammunition stockpiled in the airbase, fighter planes like MIGs, rocket launchers, mortars and fuel tanks.
Official sources said that as the content appeared to violate the programming norms, a show-cause notice was issued to the channel in January . The channel appealed against the order before the inter-ministerial committee, arguing that the purported violations were based on “subjective interpretation“. However, the committee remained unconvinced and observed that the channel “appeared to give exact location of the remaining terrorists vis-a-vis sensitive assets in their vicinity .“ The panel said that the channel had given the location of an ammunition depot, a school and residential premises vis-a-vis the space where the terrorists were holed up and recommended that the channel be taken off air for 30 days. It later restricted the ban period to a day .
Reacting to the I&B order, a channel executive said, “We have received the letter. It is shocking that NDTV has been singled out in this manner.Every channel and newspaper had similar coverage. In fact, NDTV's coverage was particularly balanced. After the dark days of the Emergency when the press was fettered, it is extraordinary that NDTV is being proceeded against in this manner. NDTV is examining all options in this matter.“ The ministry maintained that the decision was taken after it was found that the channel had “not shown restraint, responsibility and sensitivity and revealed strategically sensitive details“.
In June 2015, the I&B ministry had introduced a new clause in the programme code that said that broadcasters were prohibited from “live coverage of any anti-terrorist operation, wherein media coverage shall be restricted to periodic briefing by an officer designated by the appropriate government till such operation concludes“.
At present, there are 243 TV transmitters of varying power functioning in border districts in the country.
All areas that are not covered by terrestrial transmission -including those in border areas -have been provided with multi-channel TV coverage through DD's freeto-air service `DD Free Dish'.
Contribution of television to the Indian economy
...is more than film industry’s: 2012-13
Graphic courtesy: India Today
See graphic:
Contribution of television and film industry to the Indian economy
Television Rating Point (TRP)
The vulnerabilities of the system, as in 2020
TRPs: Built On Houses Of Cards?, October 12, 2020: The Times of India
The entire TRP system that underpins over ₹25,000 crore worth of TV advertising is riddled with serious vulnerabilities and challenges: A tiny and skewed sample of 44,000 homes for a viewership of 84 crore, outdated survey data, regulatory changes – and, as the unfolding scandal has highlighted, scope for manipulation through bribery. Gaurav Laghate takes a close look
Television rating points are once again in the news after the Mumbai police claimed it had busted a racket involving manipulation of TRPs by unscrupulous channels to fraudulently boost viewership data and mislead advertisers.
The ongoing investigation has unearthed that five panel TV homes – households where meters are installed to capture viewership – were compromised to rig viewership of certain channels. That’s correct, just five homes.
What difference can five homes make in a country with a TV viewing universe of 836 million? The answer: A big one among smaller genres like English news, niche categories like infotainment, and even some regional channels.
Take the example of Mumbai, the financial capital of the country. The city has over 2,000 bar-o-meters installed by Broadcast Audience Research Council India, which is around 5% of the 44,000 meters that BARC claims to have installed across the country.
As per last week’s viewership of the English news genre, the average reach of all the English news channels put together was 0.4% in Mumbai, and the average time spent per channel was around 15 minutes for the entire week.
Effectively, just eight panel homes watched these channels in Mumbai last week, giving them a disproportionate weightage in ratings.
Here’s how.
Hypothetically, if one channel identifies even two homes with these bar-o-meters and pays them to watch one particular news channel for 2 hours, instead of 15 minutes, in a week, the average time spent on that channel will go up by a whopping 175% to over 41 minutes. As reach has remained the same, TRPs of the channel in Mumbai alone will also go up by 175%.
The other fundamental issue with TRPs is the mechanism. While every effort is said to be made to keep the list of panel homes confidential, the vulnerability lies in the human chain: A TV channel bribes a relationship manager in the research set-up, who then ‘incentivizes’ a few households to keep the channel switched on. “Rigging of 10-20 homes or even up to 50 homes will not have any impact on mass entertainment channels, but for smaller genres, ratings will widely swing in their favour,” said a top TV executive of a channel.
TOI spoke with multiple executives across TV channels and media agencies and most of them asked for anonymity to speak freely as the matter is too sensitive and their clients are directly involved.
Rig The Gig
Since the advent of the ratings system in India, channels have tried to use unscrupulous methods to manipulate ratings. While BARC’s role as a ratings agency is now under intense scrutiny, its predecessor, TAM, which was a joint venture between Nielsen and Kantar, was also criticised on similar grounds. Earlier in July, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) had accused BARC of “conniving” with TV9’s Bharatvarsh, a Hindi news channel, to manipulate viewership.
Rajat Sharma, president of the NBA, told this correspondent that the events that have unfolded in the last few months and particularly the last three days, have clearly demonstrated that there are “weaknesses” in the rating system.
“BARC itself has acknowledged in its police complaints that metered homes are being manipulated. The investigation has exposed that panel homes were being compromised by certain channels. It has been done with the help of ex-employees who are familiar with the system and aware of which homes have meters,” said Sharma, who is also chairman of India TV.
Corrupted data, Sharma added, is creating a false narrative on ‘what India watches’ and is putting pressure on newsrooms to make editorial decisions that are distorted and based on inaccurate information.
Industry mavens say broadcasters themselves will have to stop the practice. “There is no vaccination against this manmade problem,” said the CEO of an ad agency. “All stakeholders have to understand that TV measurement is an industry service and the people who created the service should abide by a set of ethics.”
An email query sent to BARC India remained unanswered till the time of going to press. A senior TV executive said that if people are intent on beating the system by unethical practices, there is no foolproof solution against such frauds. “There are numerous statistical forensic methods used continuously by the system. But one has to understand that between 44,000 meters, the system is generating data points for every individual every 8 seconds. The quality control algorithms check data points randomly, and will not keep checking the same household,” he explained.
Big Returns On ‘Investment’
TV channels, especially those that are free-to-air (FTA), are dependent on advertising revenues. For them, spending a few lakhs on tampering with viewership data could yield big gains. “The upside is too big to not take such risks, which is why many channels keep doing this, instead of spending money on quality content,” said the distribution head of a TV channel.
BARC India uses third-party vendors for installation, maintenance, and operation of bar-o-meters at panel homes. For this, it pays between Rs 150-Rs 750 per month to these panel homes. Which makes it challenging to get higher socio-economic classes to allow these meters to be installed in their homes. In effect, it leaves the top 2.5% of Indian viewers out of the viewership measurement system. “There is no motivation for most of the higher economic classes to allow bar-ometers in their homes. Thus the entire ratings are coming from ‘economically weaker’ households, who are easy to target. It’s like elections, where people cast their votes in favour of one candidate for money,” said the business head of a channel. BARC has been working on mitigating these risks. In April 2017, it set up a six-member independent disciplinary committee headed by Justice (retired) Mukul Mudgal to investigate and address complaints of viewership malpractices and tampering of its measurement system. In the next 28 months, the council referred 18 cases to the committee with evidence of malpractices.
“The issue is that BARC complains but police doesn’t lodge FIRs in many smaller cities,” said a person closely associated with BARC. “They think it is a frivolous thing to charge people for accepting money to watch more TV. Any attempts at rigging data need to be punishable under the law.”
Vicious Cycle
The entire consumer classification system, or NCCS, based on the chief wage earner’s education and number of “consumer durables” (from a pre-defined list) owned by the family, is outdated, say media industry insiders. What’s more, it is based on a 2017 survey, after which a lot has changed in the TV universe thanks to sector regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)’s new tariff order (NTO). Post implementation of NTO, consumers can select only the channels they want to watch at the MRP of each.
“Does it actually represent India’s TV viewing universe? The answer is no. The sample is extrapolated on the basis of an old establishment survey, which was done two and half years ago. It doesn’t reflect the dynamic situation on the ground,” said a TV research executive. “It predates NTO, which represented a tectonic shift in the distribution space. By gut feel we know that the TV universe has shrunk and many people have moved from cable TV to DTH. A lot of these shifts aren’t captured.”
Then there's the issue of sample size. Even at 44,000 meters, many in the industry feel that the sample is inadequate and there’s need for more boxes to diminish relative error in viewership. Ultimately, TV executives say it is a vicious circle that is going to affect the entire industry in the long term, which might see advertisers moving to digital platforms if not corrected immediately.
