TRP manipulation, News Channels BARC, BARC manipulation

TRP manipulation is not new to Indian advertising market. Few years back leading national channel NDTV has sued Nielsen Company, accusing it of providing false, fabricated data on TV ratings. NDTV ran a sting operation and found that field employees of TAM helped a channel lift its ratings by taking $250-500 per each home for watching the channel. Due to the wide spread manipulation of TAM, BARC — A new ratings system, came into existence.

Now, the same scene is repeating itself in Telugu states in news channel space. Recent BARC ratings have raised a few eyebrows regarding a news channel, which made it to the top. As per our sources, this said news channel used to bribe an employee of TAM, who was based out of Vijayawada to manipulate the ratings. After BARC ratings were initiated, BARC agency has removed this person due to allegations.

Now this news channel also managed to get into BARC with help of a key person and his accomplice, who is a lady cable operator in Vijayawada. This lady used to work in a marketing research firm, which used to do surveys for NDTV and Jagan Mohan Reddy. Sources have informed us that most of these BARC employees are on the news channel payroll and get monthly salaries from this news channel. Telugu360 is in possession of these employee names and decided not to publish.

“Everyone knows that this news channel has been manipulating ratings for years. 60% of their airtime is comprised of ads and they telecast half hour shows with charlatan Swamy in prime time. They didn’t break any news in the last few weeks or nothing significant happened. Why would ratings double in just a few weeks in anybody’s guess. As for feedback we get for our clients, response rates for a top news channel are 10 times that of the next competitor.”says a well respected advertising executive, who is a editor in a major news paper.