TV News: With Or Without Ratings
In October 2020, India’s TV ratings measurement agency BARC India suspended the release of ratings for news channels for a period of three months, in the wake of allegations and police complaints of ‘TRP fixing’ by certain news channels. Eight months later, this suspension continues to be in place. While it is difficult to say when we can expect this suspension to be lifted, there’s no indication that it’s likely to happen anytime soon.
Detractors of Indian news television would have hoped that the suspension would come as a blessing in disguise, because once the burden of delivering weekly audience volumes is lifted from their shoulders, top news channels will shift from noise and theatrics to real news coverage, which is more factual and informative, and less rhetorical.
But eight months down, there is no visible change in how the prime-time looks on various Hindi and English news channels at all. There are several reasons for this. The foremost is, of course, the expectation that news ratings will be back soon, and even the back-dated ratings from the suspension period will be reported. TV ratings have a direct impact on advertising sales, which form a large (75%+) share of revenue for the news television business.
With the passage of time, expectations of an early return of news channel ratings may have dwindled, but the uncertainty that prevails has forced TV channels to think and behave as if they are being “measured” anyway (which is technically true, because BARC India is indeed capturing the data at their end, but not releasing channel-level ratings). Advertisers are currently buying based on channel ranks in the pre-suspension period. We see news channels doing mailers to lure advertisers using their YouTube views as an alternative metric. It’s a poor, and a rather misleading, surrogate for TV viewership. But it’s perhaps the only public-domain number to flout as a news channel in India today.
But there’s no doubt in my mind that the bigger reason why news channels have not adapted their content to a ‘ratings-free’ regime is not about these technicalities but about politics. Indian news channels have clear political alignments today, and most channels and their top anchors are unabashed about which side of the political spectrum they lean on. The idea of noisy, theatrical prime-time news may have started off a few years ago as a ratings-generating mechanism, but today, it’s a politically motivated too. Presentation of facts will necessitate political balancing, which not too many channels and anchors are interested in. And if viewers (except a miniscule section that has migrated to digital news) are not complaining much either, why change anything anyway.
However, there should be some cause for concern for our news channels. The emerging idea of ‘brand safety’ is a part of conversations around media and advertising industries, not just in the West but even in India now. Brands do not want to be associated with media brands that are dodgy on their credibility levels. And TV news is not doing too well on this. In our recent Fact Or Fake report, TV rated way behind Print on its credibility as a news medium. More importantly, the gap between the two traditional media forms has widened since the previous round of research conducted in 2020.
The idea that brands may want to disassociate themselves with certain news channels over time is not a preposterous one. Brands pulling out of channels with extreme political stance, such as Fox News in the US, is now a common occurrence in the West. But it’s some time before brand safety becomes significant in India. But that time may not be more than a couple of years away.
Can the ‘suspension’ of news ratings be a permanent decision? Those who advocate that news should not depend on eyeballs will endorse that idea. In the acclaimed 2012 show The Newsroom, we saw a fairly accurate description of how viewership numbers directly impact advertising moneys, and in turn, editorial decisions. But not measuring is not a solution. If you stop one measure, another one will prop up over time.
The ad-funded news model may be problematic, but it’s here to stay. The free market will decide how its future pans out.
The author is Shailesh Kapoor, The Founder & CEO, Ormax media
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