Prasar Bharati blasts TRP recording system

Prasar Bharati—which controls national broadcaster Doordarshan—has lambasted the present system of recording Television Rating Points (TRP) after NDTV sued TAM and Nielsen, a global TV rating agency, for billions of dollars, for allegedly manipulating viewership data in India.

Prasar Bharati—which controls national broadcaster Doordarshan—has lambasted the present system of recording Television Rating Points (TRP) after NDTV sued TAM and Nielsen, a global TV rating agency, for billions of dollars, for allegedly manipulating viewership data in India.

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“The TAM data completely under-represents terrestrial and rural reach of Doordarshan, where the major strength of the public broadcaster lies,” said Jawhar Sircar, CEO, Prasar Bharati.

The Prasar Bharati Board has also given in-principle approval to collate facts, seek legal opinion and hold consultations with the information and broadcasting ministry on the issue of misrepresentation and under-reporting of data for Doordarshan by TAM.

Prasar Bharati has also decided to grant phase-wise approval to commissioned programmes for the DD Urdu channel. In the first phase, 100-150 top end applicants covering all the six genres would be granted approval with each being allotted 13 episodes.

Out of a total of 1046 proposals received for commissioning of Urdu programmes, a total of 579 proposals were shortlisted. The Board felt that approvals in respect of all these 579 proposals was not feasible, because of the huge expenditure involved but also because of issues relating to quality control, limitations on slotting and maintaining a balance between various categories and genres.