Five years on, here is how Arnab Goswami continues to trick television ratings

Republic TV owner and Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami has been setting a narrative of his own in order to declare himself an innocent victim of a ‘conspiracy’ unleashed by what he calls the ‘Lutyens media’.

In his mocked-up kangaroo court like set up, Goswami always pronounces verdict on the TRP case, in which he himself is an accused. Here are a few excerpts from his verdict: 

1. The entire TRP scam case was a “hoax”. 

2. He was made a victim of political conspiracy because Mumbai police was getting instructions from the then Home Minister Anil Deshmukh. 

3. The so called ‘Lutyens media’ conspired with Mumbai police to bring him down.

Proof of manipulating TRPs

It is in open that the FIR filed by Mumbai police in the TRP scam, which accused Goswami of peoplemeter tampering, was just the tip of the iceberg as the entire case turned out to be a larger conspiracy where the former CEO of BARC India, Partho Dasgupta, was aligned to keep Republic TV No. 1 week by week.

Dasgupta was sacked in October 2019 when the top people in the BARC Board of Directors found enough evidences of wrongdoing against him. The board roped in a third-party consulting firm Acquisory Consulting to conduct a thorough audit of processes. 

In July 2020, the report became the basis of many more sackings including that of COO Romil Ramgarhia, as it revealed incriminating details of the nexus. 

The third-party audit report and the timeline of WhatsApp chats between Goswami and Dasgupta prove the larger conspiracy to manipulate the entire measurement system put in place by the three industry bodies – IBF, AAAI and ISA. The conspiracy was hatched to keep Republic TV at No. 1 position to satisfy Goswami’s ego and cheat his advertisers.

It is on record that Goswami himself has approved the veracity of the chats as the content of chats were quoted in Republic’s statement.

As reported by BestMediaInfo.com on Jan 25, 2021, Goswami, in the WhatsApp chats after the launch of Republic TV in 2017, was seen boasting about the landing pages he bought on one of West Bengal’s largest cable networks, ICNCL. 

Goswami informed Dasgupta on July 7, 2017: Got ICNCL Landing (Referring to Kolkata market)

On August 3, 2017, Goswami wrote: Kolkata there is now clear proof they (Times Now) are tampering. Our reach is lower than them when they have no landing and we have ICNCL which is the biggest players. This is the market where NewsX person has given home data to Times Now local person Rituraj.

“Crackdown on these cheats,” Goswami wrote.

To which Dasgupta replied towing Goswami’s line: “Data is cleaned.”

Two months later, on October 4, 2017, Dasgupta confirmed with Goswami if Republic was still there on landing pages in Bengal.

Daspupta: Your Bengal Landing continues?

Goswami: Yes

Dasgupta: Times Now?

Goswami: Sir they have reduced on Times Now

Dasgupta: Ok

Modus operandi: 

Get all the inputs about distribution strategy from BARC officials and inform them about your landing pages. Complain about others’ landing pages. Share all the important news broadcast lists of Republic with the BARC officials so that Republic’s numbers could be justified week by week.

It is established clearly that Republic was resorting to both landing pages and dual LCN to artificially inflate the TRPs.

However, the nexus between Goswami and Dasgupta made sure that Times Now’s numbers are reduced so drastically (from raw data to final data) that Republic remained at No. 1.

The manipulations were so blatant that Republic’s final numbers were more than the raw data in three weeks during the period when Goswami himself boasted about his landing pages and Dasgupta reconfirmed this with him. 

The chart below is the part of the forensic report which was also referred to in Republic’s statements, implying Goswami confirmed the veracity of the chart.

This chart shows Republic TV’s final viewership data after outlier cleaning was surprisingly increased by 10, 4 and 3 TVTs in Week 27, 39 and 46 of 2017, respectively. This is both impossible and illogical from any angle.

Moreover, in several weeks, there were minimal reductions ranging from 0 to 20 TVTs from Republic TV’s raw data, again despite BARC officials being aware about landing pages and dual LCNs.

How do things stand today?

Consistently lying and shouting at the top of his voice has not only made Goswami’s followers believe in his manufactured narrative, but it has also brainwashed his followers to ignore every wrongdoing in the name of his style of nationalism.

If anyone believes that the whole case has impacted the system positively even a little bit, he/she will be disappointed to note that not only the rampant usage of landing continues till date but Goswami has devised a new way to artificially boost the ratings of his English news channel Republic TV and thus his ego.

Typically, simulcast on news channels are for big interviews and not the whole bulletin, which is poised to inflate TRPs of a niche channel.

Goswami carried live feeds of Hindi channel Republic Bharat on his English news channel Republic TV on big events recently — on Counting day on March 10 and UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s swearing-in ceremony on March 25. 

As a result, Republic TV led the English news genre with huge margin on an all-India level when the ratings for the news genre made a comeback in Week 10 on March 17. The data had included the ratings for counting day.

Also read: How Arnab Goswami fooled everyone on TRPs