Who killed landing pages?

New Delhi: As the I&B Ministry attempted to address the issue of “landing pages” with its second draft amendments to the Policy Guidelines for Television Rating Agencies in India on Thursday, the broadcast industry appeared perplexed, with several questions.

First and foremost, the top question crossing everyone’s mind was: Who was behind this move?

The other pressing question was whether this decision would stand the course and be taken to its logical conclusion.

This doubt stems from the fact that the decision to segregate viewership numbers arising from landing pages from the final TRP ratings impacts not only news television but also overall television viewership numbers.

News channels were labelled as the face of the entire landing-page row, courtesy of Arnab Goswami’s drive to beat Times Now from the first week of the launch of Republic TV in 2017.

Goswami adopted the prevailing practice used by general entertainment and sports channels. For years, top broadcasters relied on this tool, claimed to be a legitimate marketing channel. They kept it under the carpet before news channels removed the lid from the genie’s bottle.

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

The stakes on landing pages are so high that people are doubting whether the industry bodies will even let this happen, by hook or by crook.

Before we find an answer to this, it is important to address the first question: Who was behind this move?

While the noise around landing pages is quite old, and a lawsuit between the broadcasters and TRAI has been pending before the Supreme Court for about half a decade, it gained traction when BestMediaInfo.com exposed anomalies in the ratings of news channels during Operation Sindoor.

The first impact of the expose was the rollback of news television viewership reporting from a four-week rolling average to weekly reporting. The landing-page decision needed more groundwork, keeping much larger stakes in view, and a stronger resolve by the government.

Also read: BMI Impact: BARC India to report unrolled viewership data for news genre

In these five months, both proponents and opponents of landing pages exerted their full weight for and against this contentious issue.

However, almost all news broadcasters have realised by now that this model is not financially viable and that only government intervention can bring some correction to their balance sheets.

So much so that even Goswami, who opened Pandora’s box in 2017 and the subsequent years, supported the move after his funds dried up.

Also read: Landing pages curb: Advertisers see cleaner planning, stronger ad-rate leverage

In various meetings, some of which even involved Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the fierce proponents of landing pages spoke against it.

In the meantime, the government was convinced that the landing-page issue contributed to the erosion of the credibility of news media, which is also facing a huge financial crisis.

The government felt the need to bring about a permanent solution to this distortion and decided to do it by including it in legislation through amendments to the policy, instead of an executive order.

Also read: MIB strips landing pages from TRP: Industry debates feasibility and warns of pitfalls

Sources close to the government told BestMediaInfo.com that the resolve is unlikely to waver this time, despite concerns around a massive drop in overall television viewership.

“It is a matter of the credibility of an institution that is supposed to aid the growth of the entire broadcast industry. The government is clear that it has to weed out the distortion called landing pages, irrespective of the concerns that there might be significant corrections in the ratings of high-stakes properties, including the IPL,” said the source.

With this, the question of whether the industry bodies will even let this happen loses its meaning.