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The alleged "TRP scam" revealed by the Mumbai Police has sparked a debate regarding the media industry in India. In this context, data provided by a recent survey by CVoter is extremely important.
But before we go into that, a brief recap of what this alleged 'TRP scam' actually is.
The survey was conducted in the past few weeks by CVoter with a sample size of 4500 across the country. Respondents were asked several questions pertaining to the media. Six findings are of particular relevance:
Despite all of this, the viewership of news channels hasn't gone down. 81.2 percent people said that they watch news channels at least once daily. What explains this?
“It is not despite it but because of it. People are watching news channels for entertainment and they are acknowledging it in as many words,” said Yashwant Deshmukh, founder of CVoter, which conducted the survey.
The clubbing together of TV news and TV serials as both sources of "entertainment" for nearly three-fourths of the public, is a major indictment of what TV news has become.
There is a context to this. In their hunger for TRPs, many news channels feel that they need to compete not just with other news channels but also TV serials, because there is often a clash between the two during prime time hours.
Hence, such channels feel that the way to do it is by including elements of drama and entertainment within news. Had this been through coverage of entertainment it would still be fine, but this has come in the form of slanging matches and sensationalised or dramatised news.
“If you go back to the pre-TV era, at least in Hindi, Manohar Kahaaniyaan and Nutan Kahaaniyaan would always have more readership than weeklies like Saptahik Hindustan. But they would always be considered separate from news. We now have a peculiar situation in which news channels are competing with TV serials by dramatising news, focussing on crime and scandals and showing pulp content,” Deshmukh said.
Apparently, the viewership of news channels went up during the COVID-19 lockdown, and it wasn't so much due to the desire for information, which is evident in the fact that 63.1 percent people said that newspapers became an important source of information during Corona.
The reason for spike in viewership is because news channels ended up filling the entertainment vacuum created by the stopping of production of TV serials and reduction in the frequency of episodes.
“Newspapers have staged a comeback in this period as they were acknowledged as the source of authentic and useful information,” Deshmukh said.
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Published: 09 Oct 2020,06:05 PM IST