TRP scam
Scam in India
The TRP manipulation scam of 2020 in India involved the alleged inflation by some television channels of their viewership ratings. The investigation was based on a complaint filed with the Mumbai Police. The 70% revenue for television channels coming from advertising highlights the importance of Target Rating Point (TRP) for television channels.
History
In October 2020, Mumbai Police announced that they had received complaints of channels fraudulently inflating their ratings. An investigation was launched into Republic TV's viewership ratings. Fakt Marathi, and Box Cinema TV were also charged in the FIR.
The police conducted an audit into the accounts of ARG Outlier Media Pvt Ltd (owner of Republic TV and Republic Bharat). It showed that the TRPs and viewership of its Hindi channel, Republic Bharat, were high from the first month of its launch in 2016. The police alleged that the channel inflated its ratings by bribing low-income individuals, including people who did not comprehend English, to keep their televisions turned on and tuned to Republic TV. With an inflated TRP, ARG Outlier Media was able to bargain for higher revenue from advertisers. Arnab Goswami denied the allegations and accused the Mumbai Police of retaliating against the channel's recent criticism of their activities.
On 21 October, the investigation became a country-wide case, potentially covering every news channel in India investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
“TRP scam” enters the record as scam in India. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what scam, Scam and India can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “TRP scam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.