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THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 13 October 2020 The tyranny of TRPs (The Hindu)

The tyranny of TRPs (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 3: Science and Tech
Prelims level: Target rating points
Mains level: Developments and their applications and effectsin everyday life

Context:

Before understanding the controversy, let’s understand the ecosystem at play.
In India, no one wants to be regulated. The judges believe that they can self-regulate better than the National Judicial Appointments Commission ever can.
The media, especially television media, swears by self-regulation.
Energy regulators are mostly parking places for retired civil servants, few of whom have the guts to implement genuine ‘open access’ or tariff fixation.

Television penetration:

Today TV is perhaps the single biggest window of entry into any home for any business. About 760 million-800 million individuals view TV in India per week.
While TV penetration in rural India is about 52%, in urban India it is about 87%.
Of this DTH (Direct to Home) is used by about 70 million-80 million households, cable is used by 60 million, and terrestrial by about 10 million-20 million households.
About 550 million individuals tune into the TV daily and spend roughly 3.45 hours per day watching TV.
The industry boasts of more than 800 channels across various genres.
Of the total revenue of about ?66,000 crore, about 40% is attributable to advertising and 60% to distribution and subscription services.
India’s total advertising market is $10 billion-$12 billion, of which digital advertising is about $2 billion, according to Dentsu in 2020.

The nature of the game:

What channels are not admitting is that the TRP system has been rigged for many moons now, by the channels themselves. That is the nature of the game.
Channels cannot play the game without riggingthe system.
In the TAM (Television Audience Measurement) and INTAM (Indian National Television Audience Measurement) days, motorcycle riders used to be sent to follow those from TAM to retrieve data/install meters and identify ‘confidential homes’.
Those homes would be given a new plasma TV, in vogue those days. In those households, a particular channel would be turned on and put on mute on the new TV.
And the people in the house would continue watching whatever they wanted to on their regular TV sets.
Needless to say, TAM and INTAM gave different ratings reports to suit different clients.
Soon, they discovered that it was best to have the cake and eat it too, so they merged.
When BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) came about, it took over the flawed TAM meters which are now said to constitute about a third of its own metering.

Way forward:

If you take Ofcom or the Federal Communications Commission, the two main independent regulators in the U.K. and the U.S., respectively, they consist usually of government-appointed officials along with distinguished members from the corporate world.
But in India, we all disagree on what constitutes ‘independent’.
If a government of a particular ideology appoints a regulator, it will be almost certainly deemed partisan.
So, it really comes down to this: who do we trust more, the private sector or the government?
Do we want BARC ‘self-regulation’ or an independent authority established by a constitutionally elected government?
This opens up a Pandora’s box on who should regulate, how they should regulate, and who should regulate the regulators.
The hype will end soon, but it looks like nothing is going to change, for ‘Hamaammein sab nangehain’.
Nothing can better describe the current TRP (target rating points) controversy better than the Hindi proverb ‘Hamaammein sab nangehain (Everyone is naked in a public bath)’.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1)With reference to the Age Appropriate Fitness Protocols, consider the following statements:
1. It was launched on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Fit India Movement.
2. Age Appropriate Fitness Protocols have been envisaged for three age groups: 5 – 18, 18 – 65 and above 65.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both 1 and 2
(d) Neither 1 nor 2