Explained: What is TRP? How can the data be manipulated?

Mumbai police on Thursday claimed to have busted a Television Rating Points (TRP) manipulation racket, with four persons arrested in this case.

Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh told reporters that Republic TV channel, facing flak over its attack on Mumbai police and Maharashtra government in the Sushant Singh Rajput death case, was also involved in the "false TRP" racket.

What is TRP?

TRP is a tool to judge which TV programmes are viewed the most and also indicates the viewers' choice and popularity of a particular channel.

Read | Fake TRPs: BARC welcomes probe, affirms commitment to represent true numbers

Simply put, TRP denotes how people, from which socio-economic categories, prefer watching shows or channels and for what amount of time they continue to stay on it. The duration can be for a particular timing of a show, or for an hour, even for an entire day.

A consultation document about TV audience measurement and ratings in the country floated by the TRAI in 2018 defined its value as: “On the basis of audience measurement data, ratings are assigned to various programmes on television. Television ratings in turn influence programmes produced for the viewers. Better ratings would promote a programme while poor ratings will discourage a programme. Incorrect ratings will lead to the production of programmes which may not be really popular while good programmes may be left out.”

It is based on these TRPs that marketers place advertisements, which serve as the revenue for the television network.

What is BARC?

BARC is an industry body set up to design, commission, supervise and own an accurate, reliable, and timely TV audience measurement system and is guided by recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. It helps provide data points to plan media spends more effectively. There are over 2,000 barometers installed in Mumbai to monitor TRPs.

Also Read | Mumbai police to summon Republic TV directors, owners of 2 other channels arrested for manipulating TRP ratings

BARC releases weekly rating points for TV channels in India

How is TRP calculated?

‘BAR-O-meters” have been installed in over 45,000 empanelled houses by BARC. The households are chosen on the basis of education level of the main wager and the ownership of consumer durable.

While watching a show, consumers of the house register through a special ID, which is different for every member of the household. The meter captures the time consumed on one channel and by whom, providing data on viewership habits.

Can TRP data be manipulated?

The broadcasters can find these 45,000 households and bribe them to watch their channels. They can also bribe the cable operators to make their channel as ‘landing page’, making the channel first thing to appear after the TV is switched on.

Manipulated TRP ratings result in the miscalculated targeted audience for the advertisers which results in losses of hundreds of crores of rupees because of such manipulations and fake statistics of TRPs.

In the recent TRP scam, it was revealed that these persons had manipulated the sampling metering services by inducing the barometer users through periodical payments to watch particular TV channels.

Many people in whose homes these barometers have been installed have accepted that they were getting monetary benefit for keeping their TV sets on even when they did not watch it, an IPS officer told PTI.

The Mumbai police are now investigating how many TRP points were manipulated and what effect it had on advertisements.

(With PTI inputs)