TDSAT’s nod to Landing Page opens a can of worms for the TV broadcasting industry

TDSAT’s ruling reverses TRAI’s directive of not letting the broadcasters use landing page as a marketing or sampling tool, but to maintain this boot-up page for information and awareness amongst audience

Landing Page has been a long standing topic of discussion for the TV broadcasting industry, quite as popular as the topic of placement fee in the analog days. The wound has been stripped open with the recent ruling by the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) in which the tribunal has set aside the directive of the Telecom Regulatory of India (TRAI) barring TV channels from using landing page. We try to decode the matter, parameters, impact and the subsequent suggested solutions of the same.

Landing Page Issue

Landing page is the screen that one sees, after switching on the set top box, also called as the boot-up page. With the newer and better technology, broadcasters have been placing their channels on the landing page, by paying extra pocket-money to the MSOs, basically buying more opportunity to see for themselves.

For a medium sized MSO, a broadcaster has to spend anywhere between Rs 60-80 crore to get its channel placed on the landing page. In order to tap the top five MSOs, one might have to fetch around Rs 350-400 crore.

Chronology

Around May 2017, TRAI had received a letter from the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) about a channel being run on two local channel numbers (LCNs). A few weeks after that, many such letters were written to and by NBA between the association and various news broadcasters. Finally, TRAI issued a directive where it mentioned that two channels cannot be placed at two LCNs and that each channel has to declare its genre and cannot be placed anywhere outside that genre.

Shortly after that, in June 2017, TRAI specified that landing page is as good as dual LCN and that all broadcasters must avoid using that. In November 2017, the authority released its first directive against landing page, which was stayed by TDSAT. Subsequently in April 2018, it issues a consultation paper on “Issues related to Placing of Television Channel on Landing Page” that received 27 comments and counter-comments. An open house discussion (OHD) was also conducted in the following months.

The directive was challenged by multiple stakeholders – broadcasters (BCCL) and DPOs (AICOF) in a court of law. Finally, in December 2018, TRAI’s recent most direction said that the broadcasters are not allowed to using landing page at all since it significantly affects the television viewership data.

Pros

Many consider landing page as a marketing tool, crying out to legitimise the usage of the same in order to promote their new or existing tool. It surely brings a huge top of mind recall benefit to the broadcaster using this. Those who vouch for it believe that it is merely a way to enable consumers to sample the content that broadcasters offer them and that the consumer ultimately watches what he/ she likes.

It is a strong revenue stream for the last mile distribution partner, especially now, with MRP regime where the cuts and margins are decreasing for them.

Cons

Vikas Khanchandani, CEO, Republic TV, said, “The use of landing pages to drive forced reach and compromised ratings will repeat the carriage menace that played out in the Analog Era. Landing is akin to buying placement on the prime band during the analog era and forcing reach thereby manipulating ratings. It vitiates pure-play required for unbiased measurement thereby ultimately compromising creativity, entrepreneurship and democratisation of content promised by the digitisation of the broadcast industry.”

It surely does manipulate ratings and threatens to bring back the placement fees discussion from the analog days. It impacts the choice of the viewer and also gives the power to the broadcasters with deep pockets. Many argue that this is more about buying viewership, rather than earning it.

The trend was seen more in the English news genre, since any minor change in the viewership can result in huge spikes in the viewership data of the genre. However, the players in the genre have always been split about whether landing page is an ethical tool or not. Though landing page issue has been most prevalent in this genre, other genres too have been active in using this tool.

Even if a viewer stays on the landing page for 60 seconds, the viewership makes a huge difference in the genre ranking, making it rather difficult for anyone to know the real consumer preferences.

Many industry experts also observe that TV channels are not as strict a habit as newspapers and that the change in preference is much likely to happen with constant hammering of a certain content.

Content loses importance

One of the most important hazard of landing page is the decreasing importance on content improvisation. On a normal day, content governs viewership and viewership governs advertising revenues. Hence, the TV channels keep content as the primary qualitative weighing scale to understand the audience interest, targeting and even offering advertisers a safe content environment. However, if deep pockets and availability of the channel of multiple locations becomes the deciding factor, then broadcasters might stop focusing on good quality content.

BARC

The landing page matter has often come to BARC since it directly intervenes with the viewership data and the measurement body has always maintained that it is not to decide on industry workings, but will only give out the unbiased viewership data. Many have suggested that why doesn’t BARC make it compulsory that the feed on the landing page must go without the watermark, so that the viewership data is measured only for the feed that is on the regular LCN, or, alternatively landing page should only be allowed to put promotional messaging and not to mirror the original feed of the channel.

BARC has time and again maintained that it cannot single out the data from the landing page, remove it or suppress it. In multiple media reports, a BARC India spokesperson was quoted saying, “Placing channels on landing page improves opportunity to view, and is a purely distribution level activity. As per the TDSAT ruling, distribution platform operators can effectively run landing page activity. Any viewing for a channel arising out of landing page will also be reported in the weekly data, and any changes in viewership, whether peaks or troughs, will reflect in the final output. BARC India will be compliant with the TDSAT ruling, unless someone further challenges the ruling. Being a responsible joint industry body,  our measurement system and processes have been guided by our Technical Committee, with the consensus and support of all stakeholders represented through their stakeholder bodies (IBF, ISA and AAAI).”

It must also be noted that many STB are programmed differently and they power on, at the last watched channel. There are various types of STBs available in the market, making it very difficult for the industry to finalise a common solution to the problem.

Where did TRAI lose the battle?

TRAI lost the battle at the TDSAT hearing at multiple places:

1. It wasn’t in TRAI’s jurisdiction to decide the use of landing page. BCCL and AICOF had challenged the scope of TRAI’s operations while going legal against its directive.
2. Who owns the landing page? TRAI could not answer this question satisfactorily, while TDSAT agreed to the appellant’s view that it should belong to the DPOs giving them a huge revenue opportunity.
3. TRAI suggested a blanket for landing page content across all MSOs and DPOs, saying that it must only contain the subscriber-related information, and awareness about the MSO. TDSAT agreed that the technical difficulties with the varied products available in the market and with multiple DPOs were not taken into consideration.
4. None of the international standards and practices examples were shared/ quoted by TRAI, throughout the process.