TRP: I Will shout as much as possible 🙆

REDKP

14-JAN-2022

The action:

https://youtu.be/vYjXcKtQ9SU

The reaction:

If I watch such debates for the next ten days, then I'll firstly become a revolutionary and will break my 18-year-old TV set first, my friends. The anchor (Aurnab Da) here neither lets his panellists speak nor does a constructive debate take place in the above instance. The guy needs to be in a campaigning stage, my dear friends (Yes, it is his style, but respecting your panellists only makes a debate neutral, and your medium needs the panellist, not vice versa). Well, just think if his energy was converted to mechanical energy.

I still remember, in class 10, we had a class debate during the social studies period on a softer topic, and we ended up recreating a media house debate, clearly pointing out our misunderstanding of the concept ( Even I did the same; I am just embedded in an instance representing my stained hands).

The B&D Media evolved as a consequence of the Indian Media going down to be one of the most toxic sources of entertainment over a period of time. B&D could be expanded as Blunderous & Dramatic, though it would not be so wise to disclose the original expansion in such a forum at this point. Everyone might know TRP (Television Rating Points), but its importance was still very unclear to my team until this write-up came into being. But it becomes paramount to the media as the biggest chunk of revenue is from the advertisers.

A point that needs to be noted is that these advertisers don't know where this money for advertising is going. We need to understand that advertisers do not directly advertise; instead, they recruit an agency for their advertising campaigns, and they are the ones who decide where to invest this. They are completely dependent on the BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) India's Viewership Data.

Also, media. Just as education and health are not a service anymore in this nation, nor does the press function as the Fourth Pillar of Democracy anymore; rather, they have functioned more or less like business houses ever since the 1991 economic reforms, which led to many private players entering the mainstream TV and print media, thus making it a competitive field. We found many glorified versions of Doordarshan. So, in this competitive field, you are to be the market leader or maybe among the top three to get that large and fat chunk of ads, as the news channels don't just compete among themselves but also with the General Entertainment Channels (GECs) as well.

"Consider advertiser X hires an advertising agency Y to advertise his product with a capital, say Rs 1000 (just an example figure) to be spent on TV marketing. Now, depending on the product and its predicted target consumer base and the impressions, the capital investment distribution takes place. Now, as GECs continue to rule the TRP Charts, a majority of the chunk goes to GECs, and news channels will be left with just a small amount of money, which is to be distributed among all regional and national news channels." Hence, it is quite inferrable from the above example as to why news channels have more or less become like GECs in their content as a whole!

But for a few months, BARC's ratings for news channels had been stopped due to a few off-field issues, but are soon going to be reinstated, so in the upcoming future expect more nuisance as people have ultimately realised during this tricky Covid-19 period what realistic entertainment means. Still, a lot of aspects require some serious deliberation.