The curious case of landing pages in India’s broadcasting industry

New Delhi: The use of landing pages has long been one of the most divisive and murky practices in India’s television industry, a grey zone where marketing muscle meets measurement manipulation. 

For years, broadcasters, regulators, and rating agencies have sparred over its legitimacy, debating whether it represents genuine viewer reach or engineered visibility. 

Also read: Explained: I&B Ministry’s blueprint to strip landing-page viewership from TV ratings

Now, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) has stepped in with what could be a defining intervention. 

On Thursday, the government proposed amendments to the Policy Guidelines for Television Rating Agencies in India that bar viewership arising from landing pages from being counted in the final TV ratings.

The birth of the landing-page loophole

With the digitisation of India’s cable and DTH ecosystem in the 2010s, operators gained the ability to designate a “boot-up” or default channel number (Logical Channel Number, or LCN) that viewers land on when the TV is turned on or the box is powered up. 

Also read: Arnab-led NBF hails landing page action, the full circle of Republic’s TRP karma

Broadcasters began purchasing these landing positions, essentially guaranteeing that when the viewer switches the TV on, a particular channel plays, even if only for a few seconds. The result: inflated “reach” numbers, which feed into audience-measurement systems such as those managed by the Broadcast Audience Research Council India (BARC).

While landing pages are not, per se, illegal, their use in the news genre, where every fraction of a Television Rating Point (TRP) can translate into significant advertising revenue, became especially contentious.

Landing pages generate viewership that is incidental, not consciously chosen by the viewer, and thus distort ratings. Broadcasters using landing pages counter that the exposure is real and part of a legitimate distribution investment.

The Republic TV vs Times Now episode (2017–18)

When Republic TV entered the English news market in May 2017, it did not just challenge the system—it distorted it. In its first week, the channel shot to the No. 1 position, pushing aside long-time leader Times Now.

It was alleged that the surge was fuelled by extensive landing-page and dual-LCN deals, tactics that ensured the channel appeared by default when viewers switched on their TVs and even occupied multiple slots within the same genre.

These distribution manoeuvres gave Republic TV artificial visibility and inflated viewership, undermining the level playing field that television ratings are supposed to represent.

Suspicion that the numbers did not reflect genuine audience choice gained further weight when a forensic audit by Acquisory in 2020 exposed deeper manipulation within the system.

According to the audit, under the BARC CEO Partho Dasgupta, the 2017 outlier-filtering policy had been tampered with, selectively favouring Republic TV.

While the channel’s viewership data was retained and boosted after cleaning, a substantial portion of Times Now’s audience figures was filtered out, even though there was clear awareness of Republic’s heavy landing-page usage.

The “second landing” tactic by Republic Bharat (2023)

By 2023, Republic Network showed no signs of restraint. Having already benefited from aggressive landing-page manipulation in the past, it pushed the boundaries further with Republic Bharat, its Hindi news channel.

In August that year, the channel reportedly positioned itself not on the first boot-up slot, but on the “second channel” a viewer encounters, just after the operator’s default information feed. This showed the network was not stopping at bending the rules; it was learning how to outsmart them.

The regulatory and legal challenge

In December 2018, TRAI issued a directive that broadcasters and distributors must refrain from placing any rated TV channel on a landing LCN or boot-up screen.

In May 2019, TDSAT set aside the directive, holding that TRAI lacked jurisdiction to regulate channel placement for TRP purposes.

The matter reached the Supreme Court of India, which, in a July 2020 interim order, stayed the TDSAT judgment except on the landing-page issue, indicating that while TRAI may have authority in principle, the landing-page question remained sub judice.

Later, the Supreme Court listed the appeal for hearing by a Bench of Justices M.R. Shah and C.T. Ravikumar on January 4, 2023. The case remains pending, leaving the regulatory status of landing pages unresolved.

In parallel, BARC faced a legal challenge over its 2020 algorithm to mitigate landing-page impact. In September 2020, the Delhi High Court refused interim relief, noting that BARC, as an expert body, could not be lightly interfered with. The Court framed the dispute mainly as one for TDSAT rather than within its own remit.