 Hello and let's talk about TRP fixing in India's news business. A couple of days ago, the Mumbai police came out with some startling claims. According to them, certain channels were involved in manipulating TRPs, which are television rating points. Now, this is a metric which is used to determine which channels are the most watched in the country and it's the basis on which channels and the editors keep shouting about how they're the most popular. The way these ratings are calculated is with devices called barometers, which are kept in select households, anywhere between 30,000 to 40,000 such devices in the country. And these barometers collect data on which channels are watched and how much. So if those whose houses in which these devices are installed can be paid off, it's possible to manipulate these ratings. The fraud was reportedly first brought to light by the broadcast audience research council that is BARC, which releases these ratings and Hansa, which was contracted by BARC for the research. At least two of those arrested in connection with this are former Hansa employees. The other two arrested are owners of two channels, Fakparati and Box cinemas. Now the big fish the Mumbai police mentioned is Republic TV. This channel has denied these claims and said that another channel was originally named in the FIR. But amid all this uncertainty, what is clear is that there is a lot of murky stuff and that this is not something we started just yesterday. We talked to senior journalist Anand Dev Chakravarti who has been studying and analyzing this issue for years. Thank you so much for joining us. So it seems that we have a case of TRP fixing again over here. And of course, there's been a lot of debate controversy, lot of allegations being thrown by some of the people supposedly involved. But to take a slightly more to take maybe a couple of steps back. Is this kind of TRP fixing something that's unheard of or is it been, is it a regular thing which is just coming out right now at this crucial moment? If I remember correctly Outlook magazine, I might be wrong, Outlook magazine did a story sometime in the early 2000s on how people were being paid. Those who had meters, in those days it used to be TAM, right? Television audience metering or something that's what the company was called. And they were being paid by channels to watch certain channels and push up there. So this is a very old thing. The network I worked for, NDTV, we had been regularly raising this. And NDTV realized that there's no law in India which can stop this from happening. And so it went to New York, which is where the parent company of TAM at that time in India was there, which is Nielsen and Canter Media, I think. And it filed a case in New York where the judge said that this is not within our jurisdiction. You'll have to take this to India. And those case papers, actually, I am part of that because I was one of the people who used to analyze ratings to find out where this kind of rigging is going on. This has been consistently happening way before Republic TV was ever born. So all those who are crying foul and they're basically all part of this game. That is very clear about it. Absolutely, right. So but just to sort of give our viewers a more concrete understanding, could you just take us through the mechanics of how this kind of tampering works? So let's first understand how television ratings are collected. So there are 44,000 meters in India and what I could make out from the BAK website, 40,000 actively on the panel, which is from where they take data every second, where the data is recorded every second. And I think there is a GSM network through which without visiting the home, they can collect the data into their office through a phone. Now, how does it happen? There is a meter, which they call the Baro meter or the People meter. And for each meter, there are each person in the household has a button. So at least that was the old system. Maybe TAM has changed it. But on TAM's website where I read the technology, it seems to be something similar. So if let's say you and I are flatmates, right? So we'll have two buttons and every time we come into the room and we are watching actively, we'll have to press our button. And every time we leave, we'll have to also press. Now, how does TAM make out that what we are watching? It is possible, you know, you remember in the old cable days, your channel needs to switch from one number to another and you will have to find it again. So there is an audio record being taken. So they're looking at, they're actually tracking not just the picture, but they're tracking the sound of the channel. At the back end, they're tracking all these channels and they're matching the audio to see whether this is the channel. So that is the way they can make out who our watch is being watched, right? So Prashant, we all know and we've discussed this in the past that people watch entertainment much more than news. And this is not anything new in there. It is true across the world. And the less, let's say, the less capitalist country is, interest is news is lower, right? Because the idea of news itself has some connotation with markets and being informed to be a citizen. If you don't value that, if that is not part of your social value system, there's no reason for you to watch news. So a lot of people actually watch entertainment much more than news, right? So let's now take the case of something like, let me take a channel like Star Plus, for instance, right? Which is a frontline Hindi general entertainment channel. If I look at that, then every day out of those 40,000 meters, which are active, about 8 odd percent, which is about 3,000 odd meters, actually are actively watching Star Plus. Only Star Plus, I'm not talking about Hindi entertainment. Because Hindi entertainment would be watched by about 48% of all sample viewers. By sample viewers, I mean the people who are in meter homes, right? Which is about 1.7 lakhs, 1.6 to 1.7 lakhs, right? Now, here's the point that Star Plus, if it went to 50 such meter homes, now meter homes are supposed to be completely confidential. You're not supposed to know, right? Which is why in your family, if you have anyone who works in a channel or has anything to do with a channel or whatever, then that family household cannot have a meter. The problem is that these meters homes constantly get leaked. It's not that difficult. You can actually, you don't even have to bribe the people who put the meters. You actually have to bribe a cable operator. Because a cable guy goes to collect the money, monthly money. They sometimes go to fix, the connection is poor, they'll go to fix and they'll see what the hell is on this TV set. They know there's a meter there, right? So it's not very difficult for you to find out where those meters are. Now, suppose you went to a household which is a meter, right? First of all, before that I want to ask you a question Prashant. Would you allow Bach to set up a meter in your home and tell you that every day, every time you watch, that everyone in your family, when you watch, you have to press a button. When you stop, go out of the room, you must press the button and leave. When you come in, you must press the button and will you do it? Probably not. So every person in every channel, every channel has a distribution person. Who looks at whether these channels are being reached, connected. Everyone will tell you that even the households, which are supposedly telling you about the richest people, right? What is called NCCS, which is the new category they use, A, right? Earlier we used to call it socioeconomic category, SEC now it's called NCCS. I've forgotten what the thing is, some consumer, something category, right? Even those which say are the affluent, in affluent aid, as are actually put in the staff quarters. Because no middle-class household is going to allow you to put a meter in your house. It's not going to happen, right? So this is what invariably happens. In any case, let's come back to the issue. Now, it has been repeatedly found in stories done by reporters and sting operations. NDTV did a few sting operations as well. What happens is that in a person who is a poor household, right? Let's say in Dharavi or in Shadra, which has a meter, right? And a channel goes and says that here is a brand new 48-inch Samsung TV for you. Here is a Tata Sky or whatever connection, Dish TV connection. You watch whatever you want to watch on this brand new TV. And here is 500,000 rupees per month for your additional expenses like electricity or whatever. This other TV on which the meter is connected, please make sure it watches my channel for five hours a day, right? And also make sure all four or five people in your family press the button. So on the face of it, a person who doesn't speak English, right? Probably doesn't earn enough. Their entire family is watching English news, sitting in Dharavi because they've just switched it on. They've got another TV given nicely by the channel for them to watch. Now you will say, does it make a big difference? Now, here are some calculations that might be interesting to look at, right? If you have, let's say 50 such homes, again, just to be sure that the viewers remember, do you remember Prashant, how many meters did I say in all over India? 40,000. Correct. So 40,000, right? I take 50 such meters across India and I go there and I say that here is a TV set. You watch whatever you want to watch on it. This is on your meter TV set. All of you must switch this on my channel for 300 minutes a day. If that happens, a Hindi general entertainment channel, its ratings would move up. If it had 20% market share, it will go to 21.5%. Yes, but we're talking about, say, just a difference about 1.5% here. So it's actually on the face with quite a small number. So what difference does it exactly make in the real world, as I said? So Prashant, the difference it makes is that you can move actually from number two to number one and then get a leadership premium. If you actually can sustain it for six months, you will end up with 50, 60, 70 or even more money, crores. I don't mean 50, 60 rupees, I mean crores annually, which is a lot of money. If we take that for a Hindi news channel, for instance, and if I look at the numbers as to what happens, the same 50 boxes, you manipulate for about five hours each person every day, 50 boxes, which is about 210 people, your ratings go from 20% to almost 26%. And that pushes you from number, let's say, three to number one. Of course, the race is much tighter. Here, a number three person would probably be at 15, 16%. But they will be pushed up to 20%. And that will put them at number one. And that again is 50, 60 crores annually if you can sustain it. If you look at English news, this is the interesting part. 50 meters, 210 people ask them to watch for five hours a day. If you had a 20% market share, Prashant, I would ask you to guess where you would end up. Say around 30%. No, not 30%. It's 79%. You would have nearly 80% of the market because the market is so small. A total of about 450 individual sample individuals watch English news every day. And that is projected for the entire universe. So you can imagine what rigging 210 more people will do to your ratings. Now let's look at 10. You say 50 is difficult. 50 all over India. You could get caught and bark as its own vigilant steam. If they catch you, then you're blacklisted. There could be more things that can happen to you. Hindi, general entertainment. If you have 10 boxes doing the same thing, 10 boxes would meters would be about 42 people. On an average, you'll go up by just 0.3. So it just doesn't make sense. Hindi news, you'll go from 20% to 21%, which is a decent number, again, because you can move from number two to number one. And that fight can get tougher. English news, just 10 such meters moves you from 20% to 49%. These I'm basing on the last 13 weeks of data for the leading channels. 20% to 50%. That is what happens by rigging just 10 meters across India out of 40,000 meters. That is the impact. And this impact is twofold. One, you can basically capture the entire market. And you can say that if the total revenue of English available for English news is, let's say, 500, 600 crore, I should be getting 200 crore out of that. You have amazing cloud based on that. More importantly, Prashant, is the impact on content, right? You could ask me, how can content be affected? If one channel is gaining, how does it affect others? Because we know that everyone is looking for ratings. And when they see that, OK, this channel at 99 o'clock is getting 80% of the ratings. What have they been doing? What have they been showing? Well, they've been showing Sushant Singh Rajpur. That means everyone wants to watch Sushant Singh Rajpur. So this has a bandwagon effect. Everyone moves to Sushant Singh Rajpur. They don't get the ratings. Because we are seeing that those guys still are at low ratings. It makes no difference to the rating. But they think they dare not move away from it. Because they'll say, if we move away from it, then we are out of what people want to watch. So you can actually determine, by this method, push other channels to do what you are doing and basically move from media to gaudy media by simply manipulating this. Absolutely. So it's an interesting question here is, how come there are absolutely no checks and balances on this since the point of failure seems so easy? No, there are checks and balances. There are checks and balances. For instance, as I said, that if Bach has its own algorithms and it's things which we'll see that if suddenly in a place in Dharavi where people were watching for 10 minutes, they're watching for 300 minutes, they're going to come and check it sooner or later and they're going to remove those what are called outliers from the system. They will do that. Damn notoriously, even after pushing and prodding, fail to do it. They also have a vigilance team which actually goes and checks what is happening. And in fact, I think the Mumbai police was claiming, I don't know whether that is true, that some of the initial complaints actually came from Bach itself. They did the investigation. I don't know whether that is true, whether what I'm saying, whether I've understood it correctly. But Bach does do this regularly. The point is that there's an entire network of what is called consultants who are rigging meters all the time. So they'll tell you that give me this much money, I will get you, this is your guarantee rating. You'll see that one week, you are number one in Chennai. Next week, you're number one in Calcutta. Next week, you're number one in Bangalore because they have the entire system. Bach is unable to put... There are holes all over, right? So for it to dawn and so every part of that fabric, it is not that easy. So as long as there is a system, as long as channels are going to be able to manipulate it, this is going to happen. You can't get out of it. And so that, like you said, this basically ends up not being just a question of ratings or even money for that matter, but the fundamental question about journalism itself. So do you see any possibility of... Say I'm at the risk of sounding a bit naive. Do you see any possibility of, say, content slash or any way of moving out of this kind of rat race? Are there any alternative methods used? Other parts of the world, for instance, it's kind of go beyond this. My answer to that is no as of now because I'll tell you why, because people do say that let's look at digital and yesterday I had actually tweeted two frames at the same time, Ravish at nine o'clock on NDTV India and Republic India, Bharat, which is the Hindi channel, which whose ratings I would think is 10 times that of NDTV India. And at nine o'clock also probably 10 times. But in terms of a number of people watching at the same time on YouTube, Ravish at nine o'clock at 35, 36,000 and Republic Bharat had 23 odd thousand. So you can see that if that were the market, then 60% would be Ravish and Republic Bharat would be 40%. I'm just giving a naive rough calculation. However, 35,000 is no patch on the number of people who tune into Hindi news at nine o'clock. Even if it were 1% of the 84 crore people who have, it would still be 85 lakh people per minute, every minute. I'm not talking about, so when we say, if you went to YouTube and saw a video which has 85 lakh views over six months, you will say, oh my goodness, that is an amazing video. I'm talking about per minute here. So that's the difference in the kind of reach television has. So advertisers will obviously always be keen to go to these channels. And as long as the Indian viewer is like that, and why Indian viewers across the world are like that, advertising is this is inbuilt in capitalism. We need to understand that. It would be naive and utopian for us to believe that capitalism is going to allow journalism which questions it. That's great. Sure. Thank you so much, Anand. You were talking to us. Thanks. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back on Monday with more news from the country and the world. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.