TRPs Race Comes in Focus at Global Communication Conference

The race for TRPs among some private television news channels has come into a sharp focus at the two-day conference of the Global Communication Association (GCA) that kicked off today.

Communication professionals from across the world gathered here for the conference with the theme of “Breaking Barriers – Creating new communication horizons”.

In his opening remarks, Prasar Bharati Chairman A Surya Prakash described the chase as more of “Blood Pressure Raising Points (BRPs)” as certain news channels keep having eight to panelists debating at the top of their voices. No other country in the world seems to have this kind of a Maara Maari on TV news channels, he said and called upon the viewers switch over to Doordarshan if they get fed up with the private channels. “We do not ape the west, we are very much Indian,” he remarked describing the ethos at Doordarshan.

Pointing out that mass media in general has been experiencing an exponential boom in the country, Mr Surya Prakash called for “our own solutions” to meet the challenges of growth.
Echoing the same sentiments, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramiah, who was the chief guest, said some electronic media channels appeared to be in a great race to meet deadlines. This was why, he said, sometimes the viewers might not see anything big in the so-called breaking news.

He suggested that steps should be taken to curb monopolies among media houses and even private treaties. The role of the Press Council should be redefined to cover TV news channels as well, he said.

He said he always stood for the freedom of the Press and constructive criticism.
Dr Vinod Nowal, Deputy Managing Director of JSW Steel Limited, who was the guest of honour, said there was a huge barrier between what people at the helm say and what they do. India needed to improve a lot on infrastructure allocation of natural resources if it has to emerge as the global manufacturing hub. He pointed out that the interest rates in the country are very high at 18% as compared to the developed countries which enjoy a rate of 3% to 4%.

In his keynote address, Mr Deepak Mukherji, Communication consultant and former director of corporate affairs at Shell India, dealt with challenges in breaking barriers of communication and said the professionals ought to differentiate between trustable and trustworthiness. “We all seem to be experts in publicizing promises and not what is delivered,” he said and called for an increased focus on the trustable element rather than talking about mere transparency among corporates.

Conference curator and organizing secretary Krishna B Mariyanka said the two-day event will focus discussions on Faltering Media social responsibilities, Communication CSR through media, news distribution in social media, communication for PPPs, sustainability communication, branding, new digital journalism, challenges in multi-cultural communication, political communication, digital privacy, healthcare communication, and so on.

Achievers in various sectors will be felicitated with the A.P. Chowdappa memorial award for excellence in communication at the end of the conference tomorrow evening.