News channel investigators are now the accused

It’s ironic that the news broadcast industry, falling over itself to rip the dirt under the feet of Bollywood and so many other ‘villains’, is now itself in the dock on charges of manipulation of audience data, popularly known as TRPs (television rating points).Over the last week, following complaints by Hansa Research, the agency that collects and processes TV audience data, the Mumbai Police Commissioner Parambir Singh has said Republic TV and two regional Marathi channels had been boosting viewership numbers illegally. The 4-5 employees of Hansa Research arrested by the police spilled the beans: homes who had the monitoring panels of who watches — called bar-o-meters — had been paid to keep their TVs on a few select channels to boost ratings.