Arnab Goswami’s TRP Scam Causes 431 Crore Loss To Times Now

Arnab Goswami along with Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) former chief Partho Dasgupta manipulated the Television Rating Points (TRPs). Their plan resulted in I losses to Times Now. It involved using dual logical channel numbers (LCNs) that boosted the ratings, said the Mumbai Police. The Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami is named in the charge sheet.

The 1,912 pages charge sheet filed by Mumbai Police includes names like Goswami and others in it. Apart from Goswami, names from ARG Outlier Media Private Limited including CFO Shiva Sundaram, COO Priya Mukherjee, chief manager Shivendra Mulherkar and manager Ranjeet Walter were mentioned in the charge sheet.

It also has names of Sanjay Verma and Amit Dave from Teleone Consumer Products under which the MahaMovie channel works. All these accused persons have been charged under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (cheating, forgery, criminal breach of trust, conspiracy and destroying the evidence).

It has been found that all these accused persons came together and devised a plan that would manipulate the TRPs and in turn help Republic TV and Republic Bharat. They used the logical channel numbers (LCNs) and violated the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the Mumbai Police mentioned in the charge sheet. 

Also Read: Arnab Goswami Bribed BARC CEO?

According to the details, the Times Now channel has suffered due to this. The TRP of Times Now was manipulated between June 2017 and March 2018. This led to Rs 431 crore loss for them. The investigation began after a complaint was lodged in October 2020 by BARC stating that manipulation of TRP was going on.

2,000 barometers were installed in different Mumbai households. For some time the TRPs were monitored. They found out that money was paid to people to keep their TV sets on and tuned in to the particular channels. Goswami paid these people to keep their TV set tuned to one channel as it would help to change the TRPs.

Suspicions began after Republic TV was launched. In 2017, BARC former chief along with few others and Goswami manipulated the TRP rankings to bring down Times Now on No.2 spot and CNN-18 to No.3 while Republic TV became the No.1 channel in just a week. The charge sheet added that Dasgupta was paid a huge amount by Arnab to do all this.