NBA writes complaint letters to TRAI about the legal violations by Republic TV

Republic TV under the scanner of law

Wednesday, 21st October 2020

 Even as the Mumbai police has arrested as many as six persons while probing into the charges that quite a few households with the bar-o-meters were offered money in exchange of keeping their TVs tuned to the Republic TV Channel and two other Marathi channels for boosting TRPs, multiple formal complaints have poured in from the National Broadcasters Association (NBA). The organization has accused Republic TV of major regulatory violations for boosting their viewership.

Across the past six months alone, NBA has written as many as 20 letters to the Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) against the Republic TV that is holding several ‘logical channel numbers (LCNs)’, across other languages and genres in total violation of the regulations of TRAI that strictly limit a Television channel to just one LCN or just one slot on a particular DTH platform or cable.

By making use of several LCNs, Republic TV has positioned itself alongside the popular media channels across varied genres as well as languages, thereby massively boosting the scope of the channel being viewed by more and more viewers at the time of surfing. Even a slight boost in the time a viewer spends on any particular English news TV channel in any panel home can remarkably increase the channel’s TRPs (television rating points).

In a very strong letter to the chairman of TRAI in the past week only, Rajat Sharma, NBA Chairman had written that “since the launch of Republic TV and Republic Bharat channels, several DPOs (distribution platform operators) are registering these channels under different genres in their EPG (electronic program guide) by listing them on multiple LCNs or placing the channel in the incorrect language category in their EPG.”

“Despite our various representations, Republic TV, which is a ‘News and Current Affairs’ genre TV channel in the English language category, is being re-transmitted on various networks in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry in the incorrect Tamil language category in the news genre and the said activity continues even today with impunity,” said Sharma.

Sharma further said that Republic TV’s moves were also “in violation of Regulation 38 of Quality of Service (QoS) Regulations, which require that a channel of same language shall be put together within the same subgenre”, and also added that “QoS Regulations are meant to protect consumer interest, and a particular viewer who is navigating through the EPG of a particular language should not be subjected to finding different language channels placed in between that particular language channel. In our previous letter dated 01.06.2020, we had clearly demonstrated how this activity is undertaken in TN, Puducherry wherein Republic TV is placed in between Tamil language news channels.”

Sharma further said that Republic TV’s moves were also “in violation of Regulation 38 of Quality of Service (QoS) Regulations, which require that a channel of same language shall be put together within the same subgenre”, and also added that “QoS Regulations are meant to protect consumer interest, and a particular viewer who is navigating through the EPG of a particular language should not be subjected to finding different language channels placed in between that particular language channel. In our previous letter dated 01.06.2020, we had clearly demonstrated how this activity is undertaken in TN, Puducherry wherein Republic TV is placed in between Tamil language news channels.”

This, according to Sharma was “anti-competitive and amounts to an unfair trade practice adopted by these networks in favour of Republic TV, which is discriminatory against channels of our members and causing irreparable loss to their business.”

Source: Times of Indai