Fourth pillar of democracy facing allegation of earning fake TRP
Mumbai police said that they discovered a major racket of minimum three news channels playing with TRP, including fakt Marathi, box cinema, republic tv.
According to Mumbai police commissioner Param bir singh the scam focuses on how these households were paid to watch certain channels and keep them switched on even when no one was watching.
As per Hansa Research, approximately 30,000 BARC meters are installed in various parts of India to monitor various programmes and channels, and based on the statistical metrics, ratings are awarded to channels. Advertisers pay the channels at the rates fixed on the basis of the ratings.
Singh added “In some cases, people who did not understand English were keeping English channels like Republic on through the day,”. Some channels paid households as much as rs.500 a day.
Singh said further investigation revealed names of Shirish Shetty, owner of Fakt Marathi channel, and Narayan Sharma, owner of Box Cinema. Both were arrested on Thursday.
As per state home minister Anil Deshmukh “The investigation in the case is underway and action against the chiefs of the channels will be taken as per law. Police have asked for more clarification on a few things from the channels.”
More details are expected to come out in the case of fake trp.
Republic TV, in a statement, rubbished Singh’s claims. Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief of the channel, said the Mumbai police chief made false claims against Republic TV as the channel had questioned him in the Sushant Singh Rajput case investigation, palghar and many more. Goswami said the channel will file a criminal defamation case against the Mumbai police commissioner. BARC has not mentioned the channel even in a single complaint adding Singh should issue an apology and get ready to face the channel in court.
