Why TRP is a big deal

NEW DELHI: Mumbai police on Thursday said it has busted a racket where three channels— Republic TV, Fakht Marathi and Box Cinema-— manipulated Television Rating Points (TRP), a measure of viewership that drives advertising revenues, and arrested four people.
We take a look at how TRP works for television channels—
What is TRP?
TRP or "television rating point" shows what percentage of a programme's target audience viewed it. A show's TRPs increase when more people watch it.
Why do channels chase TRPs?
It's all about money - a show with higher TRPs has a bigger audience, so advertisers are willing to pay more to advertise on it.
How are TRPs measured?
An industry body called BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) installs a device called "peoplemeter" at households participating in its survey. The peoplemeter tracks the shows being watched by listening for watermarks embedded in their audio. The BARC remote has buttons assigned to each member of the household. This keeps a track of who is watching a show.
How many households are involved?
44,000 households spread across the country are surveyed by BARC to estimate the viewing habits of about 20 crore TV households, or roughly 84 crore viewers.
How is BARC's data used?
Every Thursday, BARC releases data comparing the viewership of different channels and programmes, broken down by audience demographics - age, education, income, etc. The number of viewers a show has and the time spent watching it from the basicfor all TV channel buying and selling in the country the advertising revenue each channel gets.