BROADCAST Audience Research Council (BARC), the industry body that measures Television Rating Points (TRPs), has suspended the publication of weekly individual ratings of news channels for “eight to12 weeks”, days after Mumbai Police began investigating a “racket” of fraudulent manipulation of TRPs.
One of the channels, Republic TV, had gone to the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe into the allegations raised by the Mumbai police.
The Supreme Court today refused to admit the petition, saying that the channel should approach the Bombay High Court “like any other citizen-facing investigation”.
In a statement, BARC said the period would be used to bring the rating system to global standards and discourage “unlawful inducement of its panel home viewers”. It said it would “review and augment the current standards of measuring and reporting the data of niche genres to improve statistical robustness and significantly hamper potential attempts to infiltrate panel homes”.
The development has been welcomed by the private television news broadcasters — News Broadcasters Association (NBA) which called it an important step which could help to mend its systems and restore the credibility.
News channels have come under the government scanner for noxious reportage and the ministry of information and broadcasting had issued an advisory to all the private news channels directing them to adhere to the programme and advertising codes that may not contain anything obscene, false, defamatory, half-truth and deliberate content.