The government has announced its decision to move away from the current system of distributing advertisements based on fabricated Television Rating Points (TRP) and newspaper circulation figures.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Zahir Uddin Swapon made the announcement during a meeting with leaders of the Television Editors Council (TEC) at the Secretariat on Sunday.
The minister emphasised that in the digital age, gathering accurate statistics on visual media viewership is not a difficult task. He criticised the existing mechanism, noting that it is unacceptable to rely on a mere 500 TRP samples to represent the viewership of 50 million televisions across the country.
Regarding the print media, the minister acknowledged the current lack of a digital mechanism to compile and confirm the total history of digital presses.
However, he asserted that the Information Ministry would exit the policy of distributing advertising facilities and benefits based on arbitrary or self-reported numbers.
“The Ministry of Information will emerge from this policy where we accept falsehoods or distribute benefits based on fabricated figures,” minister stated.
While the minister indicated that the overall scale of opportunities and facilities might not change, he insisted that the data and statistics the government uses to make decisions must be free of false information.
He concluded that once the government establishes a “Right Digital TRP System” and a “Right Digital Print Counting” system, it will be able to ensure the fair distribution of all rights and benefits based on accurate data.
