TRAI has objected to unethical distribution practices to boost TV ratings.

NEW DELHI: In a major victory for the News Broadcasters Association (NBA), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued a mandate against use of multiple LCNs (logical channel numbers) to boost TV ratings .

The NBA had filed a complaint with TRAI against unethical distribution practices adopted by a new entrant in the English news genre: Republic TV , to boost its rating points (TVTs).

NBA had also appealed to the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) not to release data for the English general news category for Week 19, 2017 as the rating was corrupted due to unfair distribution tactics adopted by this channel. "The stance taken by the NBA stands vindicated," said its president Ashish Bagga after the TRAI intervention.

As a result of TRAI’s mandate and action, the rating of Republic TV has gone down by over 50% after the practice was discontinued. This drop in rating brings Republic TV closer to realistic levels of weekly reach of general English news channels which is an average of 0.6 to 0.8 million.

"This would not have been possible without the timely intervention of TRAI on NBA's complaints. Not only has the TRAI released this important mandate, it has also aggressively followed it up with Multiple System Operators (MSOs) against these practices. The NBA is grateful to the TRAI for taking swift measures to stop the malpractices," Bagga said.

TRAI, in the mandate to the Multiple System Operators (MSOs), also emphasized on ensuring that all channels falling in a particular genre appear in its (MSO’s) network’s electronic programming guide (EPG) under that genre, to make services more consumer friendly.

Earlier, major English news channels who are also members of the NBA had opted out of the measuring system to protect themselves from being measured in a non-level playing field and had clarified that they would return only after the unethical practices had been stopped.

After a series of discussions and complaints to BARC and TRAI, the English news broadcasters have resumed their watermark last Friday night subjecting themselves to ongoing measurements as they were sufficiently satisfied that due to TRAI's intervention the malpractices were discontinued.

