Mumbai: The News Broadcasters Federation (NBF) has written a letter to the union minister of information and broadcasting Anurag Thakur on the issue of landing pages. The landing page is the first channel that the viewer sees when anyone turns on the set-top box.
The letter is signed by NBF founding president Arnab Goswami and secretary-general Jai Krishna.
NBF has asked the I&B ministry to address the issue of the landing page being measured by the viewership rating agency Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) as ‘true viewership’, thereby skewing the final data.
In its letter, NBF argues that the use of landing pages to alter viewership data is a ‘restrictive trade practice’ leading the way for monopolies to be formed in the news media industry.
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It claims, “The brazen use of landing pages, bought at a price, to artificially amplify viewership data of certain channels gives channels with deep pockets an anti-competitive advantage. It is shocking that some news channels today get 84 per cent of their viewership from just two states in India, because of landing pages.”
The letter puts the onus of resolving the landing page issue on Barc stating that the TV audience measurement firm can exclude landing page data from viewership estimates.
The letter further reads, “In the past, Barc had included unfiltered outliers data from the landing page for its rating data, but had later decided to exclude it from viewership. Therefore, it is clear that Barc has both the ability and the precedent of filtering out landing page data while calculating viewership, but is still not doing so. In fact, in the past, Barc had itself termed the use of landing pages as a "false exaggeration of viewership."
The letter appeals to the I&B minister to intervene in the matter.“The NBF is fully committed to working with the Ministry and all stakeholders across the board to address the issue collectively and reach a solution,” the letter concludes.
