Why is Trai trying the TV business?

The telecom authority's latest recommendations seek to quasi-nationalise a rating system that a competitive, largely private industry uses

Hindustan Unilever, Amazon, Wipro and ITC are among India’s top advertisers. In 2019, they, along with many others, spent Rs 32,000 crore buying advertising seconds on 800 plus channels, including Zee TV, Colors and Sun TV. To decide on the channel, show, quantity, placement and so on they used the world’s largest television audience measurement system — Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) data. In the five years of Barc’s existence, no advertiser has complained about the data or sto­pped using it; nor has any media agency. That makes it difficult to understand why the Telecom Re­gu­latory Authority of India (Trai),