Sex, lies and corruption in media

Bribery, over-invoicing, fake traffic and bad ads could harm the media and entertainment business

Ever since the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment scandal came to light, there is the usual “but what about Bollywood” clamour. Sure, there are instances of sexual harassment in the film business, just like there are in corporate India. And the systems to tackle these look as fragile or as strong as they are elsewhere. In the last decade or so I know of at least two major harassment cases in one of India’s largest broadcast firms. Its Internal Complaints Committee followed them up aggressively (egged on by the respective CEOs at different points) and the perpetrators were fired in both cases. On the other hand there is one investor in technology and media who continues to be untouched by a series of sexual harassment allegations.

The whole area of sexual harassment, whether against women or men, rightly raises hackles. There are several other creepy, crawly issues that should bother the people who run India’s Rs 126,210-crore media and entertainment business.

The biggest is the amount of financial corruption that has crept into broadcasting, media buying, digital advertising and even the newly minted video streaming industry.

Take television. Almost all TV shows by major broadcasters are commissioned from outside production houses a la Balaji Telefilms or Endemol. Making TV shows is a hyper-competitive business with every firm ready to undercut its peers. But it was largely clean in the initial phase of the growth of private broadcasting in the nineties to early this millennium. Now, every time I meet with a content production firm, I hear at least two stories of programming heads or executives of TV channels being paid a consideration of some kind to commission a show with a production house. Last week in Mumbai when I came across another such story, I asked a trade publisher — isn’t there any TV firm where the programmers don’t take money to commission? No, he said. And added that the disease is likely to spread. He pointed to the head of a streaming service who was asked to go because, say the reports, he was on the take from content producers.

A 2014 report by EY puts content distribution and TV/film content production as areas that are “highly vulnerable to fraud, bribery and corruption”. The others — media selling (ad sales), talent acquisition and carriage fees. These are seeing the highest instances of fraud, says EY’s Reality Check: Fraud, bribery and corruption in India’s media and entertainment industry. The corruption in media buying where agency executives demand and take anything from an air-conditioner to holidays abroad for placing ads in a newspaper or on a TV channel is endemic.

A new one, emerging after the EY report came out, is fake online traffic. There are dozens of firms that can “trend” your content for a few thousand rupees. The trending — meaning getting very high amounts of audiences online — usually comes through bots or pieces of software. When a music video starts trending, it creates enough buzz for real people to click on it. Every million page views roughly translate into Rs 2 lakh in advertising money, says the founder of a digital media firm. To reach these million views with genuine human traffic costs Rs 5-6 lakh in promotion and search marketing. But fake traffic firms can do it in less than one-third that amount. It also means that advertisers’ money goes into reaching bots that will never purchase their product. Interestingly enough there seems very little noise from marketers (whose money is involved) or the platforms on which this fake traffic is generated. In the US, the Internet Advertising Bureau among other industry bodies has stepped in to check such fraud.

The estimate of the losses from corrupt practices in India range from one to 25 per cent, says the EY report. Many global media firms simply don’t want to invest because of “corporate governance” issues.

What foxes me, after 17 years of tracking this industry, is this — these are a really well-paid bunch of people, largely. They don’t need the money. The cleaner the business, the more the firms stand to gain. So why on earth do they do it?

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