Delhi High Court News:
TV Today v. Republic TV
The TV Today Network on 26th May 2017 withdrew its petition which it has filed against Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Broadcast Audience Research Council (BRAC) in the Delhi High Court. The network’s decision came after the court’s refusal to entertain an action against airing of Republic TV in more than one category on direct-to-home television.
TV Today had moved court days before Republic TV was declared as India’s most watched news network by BRAC. This had prompted the exit of English news channels affiliated to the News Broadcasters Association from the council last Thursday after BRAC disregarded their requests not to release the contentious figures.
BRAC’s lawyer, senior advocate Sandeep Sethi highlighted the rating mechanism which is a total number of viewers multiplied by the time spent (minimum of eight seconds) by individuals. Sethi then refuted the TV Today contention that the airing of Republic TV under both the categories of news and entertainment had led to a large increase in their ratings.
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, the counsel for TV Today, challenging Sethi’s submission, said the BRAC rankings only considered a sample of 24,000 viewers and was playing foul on Indian television viewers. Singhvi also presented a different method of calculating the rankings.
Criticising TRAI’s inaction on the issue, Singhvi said the telecom regulator blatantly violated the telecommunication regulations introduced in 2012 and 2017 by stating that a channel must appear in only one place and so, requested the court to pass directions against TRAI to investigate the matter in a time bound manner.
However, these pleas were rejected by the court after hearing the arguments of the Trai’s lawyer.
Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, rejected Singhvi’s argument of Republic TV, observed that a channel had held a viewers’ attention of over eight seconds, the minimum requirement for the rankings had to be captivating enough to be counted.
Further, J. Sachdeva refused to entertain the TV Today petition and allowed TRAI to continue the ongoing investigation in a regular manner. Failure to get a favorable response from the court, TV Today finally withdrew the petition.
