Mumbai police chief Param Bir Singh held a press conference where he provided the details of the new investigation in which Anchor Arnab Goswami owned Republic TV has also been named.
"Manipulation in TRP affects revenue in Crores and the advertisers as well. BARC measures TRP for channels. Barometers are installed in pan India to do the same. 2000 are installed in Mumbai. Location of which is confidential. During the investigation it came to light that a company was compromising this data and sharing it with a TV channel,": Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh said.
How Can TRP Be Manipulated?
Reports say one of the arrested accused person and some of the wanted accused persons were employees of Hans Research Group Pvt Lt and they have misused the confidential data which has been entrusted to them. It has apparently been done for wrongful gains of various tv channels which had resulted in the wrongful loss to various advertisers and their agencies. The report said in the preliminary investigations it was also revealed that these accused persons have manipulated the sampling metering services by inducing the barometer users by paying them periodically to watch particular TV channels. People living in those homes where these barometers were installed, have accepted that they have been monetarily beneficial for keeping their TV sets on even though they didn't watch it.
To assess the TRP of various news channels, Barometers are installed in different parts of the country. Their location is supposed to be confidential. However, if through unscrupulous means, their location is revealed to vested interest such as certain TV channels. They can pay the households in the area to watch their channel so that it is registered to be garnering higher ratings than in real.
In April 2018, such a case had been reported in Madhya Pradesh where three individuals were arrested for illegally manipulating TRP ratings in favour of a particular Hindi news channel.
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Those involved in this scam had installed TRP meters in a number of households and offered them monetary inducements to only watch a particular Hindi news channel.
Hansa Research Private Limited, the market research firm which has undertaken the task of installing these meters to fetch viewership data from Indian television homes learned about the fraud and reported it to a police station in Madhavganj, Gwalior. Following the complaint, it found out the name of the company which resorts to such activities in enhancing TRPs by allegedly offering Rs 500/- per household.
In the new case in Mumbai, Hansa Research Private Limited has again been named. Hansa Research Private Limited is one of the partners of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) for taking care of different processes involved in audience measurement.
In the press conference on Thursday, Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh revealed that certain former employees of Hansa compromised the data of Barometers by sharing it with the channels. In a similar fashion, households were being paid on a monthly basis to manipulate TV ratings.
One ex-employee who has been arrested has divulged these details and further investigation of this racket is now underway.
Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami in a statement said that the channel will file a criminal defamation case against Mumbai Police commissioner Param Bir Singh. Goswami said Singh had made false allegations against Republic TV because the channel had questioned him in the Sushant Singh investigation.
Reports say Arnab Goswami will soon be summoned for an investigation by the Mumbai Police.