‘TRPs stoke violence, sleaze on TV’

House panel wanted the Govt to hand over the job of content regulation to the TRAI till a separate Broadcast Regulatory Authority is set up. A report by Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 15, 2008, 23:36:40 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Terming the present television viewership rating system in India as “not above board” and “insensitive” to people's choice, a Parliamentary panel has asked the government to put up a regulatory mechanism to make the television rating more accountable.

“The likes, dislikes and interests of the viewers largely remain un-addressed by the rating system,” the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology said on Monday.

Echoing the popular sentiment over television channels going berserk for television rating points (TRP), the committee said the rating system in vogue was promoting violence, vulgarity, crime, sex and blind imitation of the western culture, ignoring India's great cultural values.

In recent past, television channels had received flak for coverage of the Mumbai terror attack with accusations that channels jeopardized security operations to gain higher TRP.

In its report, Television Audience Measurement in India. tabled in Parliament on Monday, the committee rubbished the claim of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation, the body of private broadcasters, that ratings do not affect viewers.

“It was the government's responsibility to protect people's interest as against the commercial interest of the rating companies," the committee noted.

“It is high time the government intervened in the matter and put in place some sort of governmental oversight or regulation on TRP system to make it credible and accountable to the choice of viewers,” it said.

The Information and Broadcasting ministry has been asked to have independent audit system to check veracity of TRP ratings. The committee wanted the government to hand over the job of content regulation to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) till a separate Broadcast Regulatory Authority is set up.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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