Indian Govt ban on TV channel ratings during war time | LME 121 | Pooja Prasanna

BREAKING NEWS

The Narendra Modi government has decided to pause the weekly TRP rankings for news channels.

For the next four weeks, the ratings that decide who is “number one” on television… will not be published.

Why?

Because the government says television coverage of the Iran–US–Israel conflict has become too sensational.

Yes.
Indian television.
Sensational.

THAT’S NOT BREAKING NEWS

The government says this coverage could create panic among people.

Which is interesting.

Because panic, drama, and shouting have been the business model of television news for years.

And the government had no problem with that during Operation Sindoor coverage, when studios looked less like newsrooms and more like war command centres.

So why is sensationalism suddenly a problem now?

And what exactly are TRPs?

And most importantly- How much money is involved?

Let Me explain

TV news is like a performance most times. 

And war time means bigger performances 

Flashing missiles.
Animated explosions.
Sirens that sound like the world is ending.

And this is not just Hindi or English TV news.

Regional channels are equally… enthusiastic.

Look at this Telugu channel.

The screen shouts: “Iran nuclear attack!”

If you watch this broadcast on mute, you might think the US is already under bombardment.

And here’s a Malayalam channel turning geopolitics into a countdown show.

“Something could happen anytime.”
“The next two hours are critical.”

Add the background music and it sounds like the trailer of an action movie.

And along with the drama comes the other reliable companion of television news.

Misinformation.

One viral video shown as an Iranian strike on Dubai turned out to be completely fake.

But it still found its way onto major channels, including Aaj Tak and India Today.

Because when the graphics are loud enough, fact-checking often becomes optional.

We saw the same pattern playing out during the Pahalgam attack as well

Misinformation.

Incitement of people.

So the next time you see a war graphic exploding on your television screen, remember what might actually be going on.

A race for TRPs.
A race for advertisers.

At Let Me Explain, we try to do things a little differently.

No dramatic countdowns.
And definitely no missile sound effects.

 If you value that, support TheNewsMinute.

Because we don’t depend on TRPs or ratings meters.

We depend on people like you who believe independent journalism matters.

Like Pooja’s LME? Support the show: https://rzp.io/rzp/support-lme

If you are watching from abroad, click this link: https://buy.stripe.com/28o01q9md0OPdtm8wR

Now back to the story

The government says it is worried about sensationalism.

Maybe they also received a few diplomatic phone calls asking:

Why do Indian news channels sound like war sirens?

But here is the real twist.

Suspending the publication of ratings does not mean ratings have stopped existing.

 I spoke to representatives from four television channels.

All of them confirmed the same thing.

Advertisers are still buying slots using last month’s ratings.

So the business of television news continues exactly as before.

But to understand why ratings matter so much, we need to follow the money.

In India, the television sector including news and entertainment was valued at around ₹78,700 crore. 

TRP ratings act as the primary currency used by advertisers to decide which channels and programmes to advertise on.

Prime time for TV news runs between 8 pm and 10 pm 

During this slot, leading English channels typically charge ₹7,000 to ₹8,000 for a 10-second ad.. 

The 9–10 pm slot, which is considered the peak debate hour, can cost around ₹22,000 for a 10-second spot.

Here is the surprising part.

The entire weekly audience for English television news is only about 15 to 18 lakh viewers.

Yes.
All that shouting.
All those graphics.

For roughly the population of one medium-sized Indian town.

For the last one year, Times Now, News 18, NDTV and Republic TV have been vying for the top 4 spots. 

The channel which is currently number one has 39% of the total market. 

Which means the biggest English news channel in the country reaches about 5 to 6 lakh viewers a week.

In Hindi, prime time slots are costlier. A 10-second ad typically costs between ₹18,000 and ₹25,000 

The Hindi TV news market is also larger than the English news segment. 

In a typical week, around 89.8 lakh viewers watch around 14 to 16 major Hindi channels

News 18 India, Aaj Tak, and India TV compete for the top 3 spots. The top channel in Hindi garners around 14% viewership and the second and third are a close 11 and 10%.

A 14% share translates to around 12.6 lakh viewers for the leading channel.

So when the volume rises on television debates, remember something.

The shouting is not about the nation.

It is about a few more lakh viewers.

TRP stands for Target Rating Point, or Television Rating Point. 

It is a system used to estimate how many people are watching at a given time.

The method was first introduced in the United States in 1975  

In India, TRP measurement started in 1999

In 2010, the BARC was created which introduced a new audience measurement system in 2015

So it’s no magic. Special devices called BAR-O-meters are installed in select homes and connected to the television sets. 

Each person in the household will have a separate id so the system records who is watching what.

These meters are installed in about 45,000 homes across India.

India has over 200 million television households.

So yes.

The viewing habits of 45,000 homes are used to estimate what hundreds of millions of Indians are watching.

It is a bit like trying to understand Indian politics by surveying one apartment complex.

BARC divides television households into twelve categories based on two main factors.

First, the education level of the household’s chief earner.

And second, the consumer durable goods the family owns.

Things like refrigerators, washing machines, and cars.

But if these sample households are not updated regularly, the classifications become outdated very quickly.

And many communities, particularly remote rural populations and marginalized groups, often end up being underrepresented… or simply left out.

Which tells you something about how this system works.

The ratings are designed to help advertisers decide where to spend their money, not necessarily to understand what all of India is watching.

And the result?

Television news increasingly speaks to the urban middle-class viewer with a fridge and a car, because that is the audience advertisers are most interested in. 

And of course, this is India.

Which means even the system designed to measure television watching… has had its own scandals.

In 2016, investigators found that some households with the rating meters had allegedly been bribed to keep certain channels running on their TVs.

In May 2017, NDTV opted out of BARC’s ratings system for its English news channel. The network argued that the TRP race was pushing television news toward sensationalism 

For several years, it chose not to participate in the ratings competition at all.

But the issue exploded again in 2020, when Mumbai Police launched a major investigation 

Police said some channels were paying households to keep their televisions tuned to specific channels for long periods of time… even if nobody was actually watching.

Which is an interesting business model.

Your most loyal viewer… is an empty room.

Investigators said some households were allegedly paid ₹400 to ₹500 a month 

Of course, after several months of investigation, the ED finally said that it could not be established that these particular channels that were initially charged, were paying these amounts directly to the households. Those channels were finally let off. 

But the allegation stays. It also exposed what many of us suspected, the vulnerable rating systems that advertisers and TV channels were completely leveraging.

Another practice that came under scrutiny was something called the “landing page.”

On some cable networks, when you switch on the television, a particular news channel appears automatically.

For a few seconds, you cannot change the channel.

That brief moment is enough for the system to register a view.

So congratulations.

You just helped improve someone’s TRP… without even choosing the channel.

The TRP case itself became highly politicised.

But it also exposed a deeper structural problem.

What matters most is not necessarily what India is watching.

It is what these sample households are watching.

And if someone manages to influence those households…

They can influence the ratings.

This isn’t just a theoretical concern.

Even the TRAI flagged these vulnerabilities in 2018 

And finally, TRP measures popularity.

Not quality.

Which is why programmes built on outrage, drama, and spectacle often do well in the ratings.

And that brings us to the real driver behind all this noise.

Advertising money.

Advertisers want maximum visibility.

So they buy ad slots on programmes with high TRP ratings.

Which mostly means the loudest programmes

So as viewers, your great contribution to the nation can be, if you switch on a news channel and watch a really loud, outrageous, hateful, communal programme

Then

For suggestions and feedbacks, write to lme@thenewsminute.com

‎Follow the Let Me Explain channel on WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbDIedz2phHLQZTyNj1W

Like Pooja’s LME? Support the show: https://rzp.io/rzp/support-lme

If you are watching from abroad, click this link: https://buy.stripe.com/28o01q9md0OPdtm8wR

Become a TNM subscriber- https://www.thenewsminute.com/subscription

Produced by Megha Mukundan, Script by Pooja Prasanna, Camera by Ajay R, Edit by Nikhil Sekhar ET, Dharini Prabharan