Rewind 2022: A relook at TV News media’s roller-coaster ride this year

It was a roller-coaster ride for the TV News industry in India in 2022. The ratings game continued as the race to be numero uno amongst the news channels kept this genre volatile. There were heated debates around landing pages, slicing and dicing of data, the role of BARC India in this entire mix, and much more. The year also saw some news broadcasters pulling out of BARC ratings. Also, during the year, NDTV faced a hostile takeover move by the Adani Group. In a latest development, Vishvapradhan Commercial Pvt Ltd, owned by Adani Group, has acquired 8.27% stake in NDTV through an open offer.

Here is a relook at the most important developments in the Indian TV News industry in the year gone by as part of Adgully’s annual Rewind 2022 series.

Ratings resumption

On February 7 this year, BARC India announced its decision to resume ratings for TV news, after a hiatus of almost two years, during which there was a complete blackout of TV news ratings. (It was in October 2020 that the ratings agency suspended releasing ratings data for TV news channels following a raging controversy surrounding the now-infamous TRP manipulation scam.) In March 2022, just two weeks before the news ratings were to be released by the ratings agency, NDTV decided to pull out of BARC ratings.

It should be remembered here that the delay in the resumption of news ratings had caused much consternation among the news broadcasters, especially smaller channels whose sustenance is intrinsically tied to advertising revenues.

In the middle of January 2022, TV9 Network quit the News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA) over its moves to further delay the resumption of news ratings. In an open letter addressed to the NBDA Board, TV9 Network CEO Barun Das expressed his “dismay over attempts, yet again, by NBDA to raise doubts over BARC data while aiming to further delay the data release for the news genre”.

“We, TV9 network, a full member of NBDA, do not subscribe to this view of NBDA Board. This seems to be a viewpoint of select members of NBDA and certainly not that of entire NBDA,” Das wrote in his letter to NBDA.

The controversies continued even after the resumption of the ratings. NBDA found “glitches and irregularities” in BARC’s ratings. The Association, whose members consist of some of the leading national news channels, was miffed at the “sanctity of data”, which revealed a sudden spike in ratings for Republic Bharat and TV9 Bharatvarsh.

NDTV on its part justified its decision to quit the BARC; its Group President Suparna Singh attributed the decision to exit the BARC to the low sample size for measuring the ratings.

Six months later, on September 30, 2022, Zee Media decided to exit BARC. In a statement issued, Zee Media said that the “biggest concern and challenge is that BARC has not given any solution nor accepted as they are continuing reporting for Landing Pages & barker pages, which impact ratings favourably for those who use these at the peril of others who do not subscribe to these unethical practices.”

Analysts and industry insiders, however, pointed out that the key reason for Zee-owned news channels to exit BARC ratings had to do with the decision by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to deny permission to uplink their 10 new channels simultaneously on the Ku-band.

Not much later, the iTV Network, too, decided to pull out of BARC ratings. The network, which has nine channels in its kitty, exited the ratings agency last month in protest against the “arbitrary and unilateral mechanism being used by BARC”.

The network alleged that there is a “total loss of faith and credibility in the working of BARC, and we along with many broadcasters are forced to remain connected with BARC because it is the only TV rating agency and enjoys a dominant position. The unexplained actions of BARC have greatly damaged our networks.”

Another bone of contention was the landing page issue, which has created discontent among the news channels for a long time. The irony is that even the beneficiaries of this practice call it unfair!

So, what is ailing the system? Even after the BARC has revised in its processes and oversight systems, including changes in the governance structure, why is it happening?

Slicing and dicing of data

It is an issue Adgully has discussed at length. While speaking at Adgully’s recently held SCREENXX 2022 event, BARC India CEO Shashi Sinha also referred to the slicing and dicing of the ratings data. He minced no words when he said that everyone is indulging in the slicing and dicing of data.

“Today, from the broadcasters’ side, the agencies’ side and the clients’ side, everyone does a lot of slicing and dicing of numbers, which leads to lack of stability and then unfortunately the ecosystem is such that we find a fair degree of interference in these markets – in a lot of European markets you don’t find interference. So, it is a sum total of various factors,” Sinha said.

He further noted that there are some challenges that are very unique to India – it is a heterogeneous market, there have been behaviour changes, and, therefore, to capture the changes in the heterogeneity requires effort. “There is homogeneity in certain kinds of viewing, like the Hindi viewing, but there is a certain amount of heterogeneity which we are not capturing. As you know, India is one of the largest markets for television broadcasting – with 800+ channels – and it is very fragmented, so that fragmentation also comes into research. Thus, error levels crop up. BARC was designed for a particular error level,” he pointed out.

Joy Chakraborty, Chief Business Officer, Zee Media Corporation, got candid about Zee Media’s decision not to take part in the BARC. He said, “The recent move that Zee Media Group took is that we have not withdrawn from BARC, but we have suspended BARC ratings. BARC is measuring our ratings, we have asked them not to release it until we get our queries answered. The watermarks are still on.”

Senior analyst Paritosh Joshi, delivering a keynote address at SCREENXX 2022, pointed out that this phenomenon is not uniquely true of India. According to him, wherever television measurement exists – and television measurement now probably exists in 100 jurisdictions around the world – there is always some strife and some struggle, and this largely arises from the old principle of shooting the messenger if one doesn’t like the message. “In fact, I have even seen criticisms of the ratings system by people who are commentators on the news industry. It is because rating exists that news becomes terribly ‘tabloidy’ and sensationalist and populist, etc. I believe that in all of these cases you are inverting the order of cause and effect,” Joshi remarked.

Toxic content

When the TV news industry was convulsed by the TRP scam in in October 2020, a few of the leading brands (such as Bajaj, Amul, and Parle) decided to keep off advertising on news channels. These brands openly admitted that toxic and hateful content aired by some news channels had driven them to blacklist them.

In June this year, the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) asked its members to keep an eye on those news channels which exit the BARC system. The ISA wants its members, the advertisers, to take an informed decision by independently assessing these channels.

The TV news business in India is capital-intensive and advertisement-dependent, making the channels do everything at their disposal to garner maximum eyeballs. The nocturnal prime-time news debates have become spectacles. And the result: aggressive postures, toxic masculinity, and sensationalism, have become the key hallmarks of these prime-time debates.

As a veteran executive told Adgully earlier for an industry story, the news business is costlier, with heavy capital expenditure and human resources. “You need a constant pipeline of investment on a monthly basis. Then only you will be able to produce quality content. You have subscription revenue and advertising revenue. The subscription revenue is so skewed because of TRAI’s regulation and micromanaging. When you are completely dependent on advertising revenue, you have to be shockingly sensational, shockingly careless, and you have to shout from the rooftop, and compromise editorial quality. You have to shock and awe the audience. Then you will be able to get the ad revenue,” he said.

In the entire ecosystem, it is in the interest of the broadcasters to tamper with the data, said Chintamani Rao. He feels that the broadcasters’ body has to have the guts to take appropriate action against those broadcasters who are tampering with the ratings. “It is very simple. But I don’t see it happening,” he said.

Regardless of all the cacophony and claims of being the No. 1 channel, the News genre will continue to be a necessary medium and will continue to attract advertiser revenues. What is changing is where and how people are consuming news. The serious inroads made by Digital is what TV News needs to keep a sharp eye on. Already we are seeing news broadcasters bringing digital to their mix to tap into the younger TG.