TRAI’s mandate on multiple LCNs, a major victory for NBA: Ashish Bagga

Ashish Bagga, President, News Broadcasters Association (NBA), has called the mandate issued by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) against Multi System Operators (MSOs) regarding usage of multiple LCNs a “major victory” for the News Broadcasters Association (NBA). This mandate has been released within two weeks by TRAI on representations made by NBA. TRAI in its recent mandate to the MSOs also emphasised on ensuring that all channels falling in a particular genre appear in its (MSO’s) network’s electronic programming guide (EPG) under that genre to make services more consumer friendly. 

Bagga said that the NBA’s stance today stands vindicated. “Not only has TRAI released this important mandate, it has also aggressively followed up with MSOs about putting a stop to malpractices. The NBA is grateful to the TRAI for taking swift measures to stop malpractices.” 

NBA had filed a complaint with TRAI against new entrant in the English news genre – Republic TV – for using multiple frequency feeds. NBA had also appealed to BARC not to release data for the English general news category for Week 19, 2017. Consequently, major English news channels who are also members of the NBA had opted out of the measuring system and had clarified that they would return only after the unethical practices had been stopped. 

After a series of discussions and complaints to BARC and TRAI, the English news broadcasters resumed their Watermark last Friday night, subjecting themselves to ongoing measurements as they were sufficiently satisfied that due to TRAI’s intervention the malpractices were discontinued. This was confirmed by most MSOs. 

According to Bagga, as a result of TRAI’s mandate and action, the rating of Republic TV have gone down by over 50 per cent after the “malpractice” was discontinued. “This drop in rating brings Republic TV closer to realistic levels of weekly reach of general English news channels, which is an average of 0.6 to 0.8 million. This would not have been possible without the timely intervention of TRAI on NBA’s complaints,” he added.

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