Kerala’s media industry has been jolted by explosive allegations of a ₹100-crore television rating manipulation racket, a scandal that threatens to shake the credibility of India’s broadcast measurement ecosystem. The allegations, now under formal scrutiny by Kerala Police, suggest sustained and systemic abuse of the country’s most important TV audience measurement currency — the weekly ratings released by BARC India.
What makes this case particularly alarming is its uncanny resemblance to the alleged 2020 TRP scam. Once again, the central accusation involves a Kerala-based news channel owner, a BARC employee, and the illicit sharing of highly sensitive data, including PIN-code-level information on households where BARC meters are installed.
Kerala State Police Chief Ravada Chandrashekhar confirmed that a preliminary probe has begun after the Kerala Television Federation filed a complaint with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and BARC’s top leadership. Calling the allegations “very serious,” the DGP has begun assembling digital, financial and communication evidence to trace how deep the manipulation allegedly runs.
A Money Trail Through Cryptocurrency
According to preliminary findings, the channel owner allegedly transferred crores of rupees—reportedly amounting to nearly ₹100 crore—to a BARC employee identified as Premnath, using USDT cryptocurrency routed into a Trust Wallet account. Police believe the money was then distributed to multiple intermediaries, suggesting a potentially wider manipulation network operating beyond Kerala.
Leaked WhatsApp chats and call records cited in the inquiry reportedly show:
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Premnath sharing weekly rating numbers in advance,
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Indicating meter locations through PIN codes, and
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Acknowledging payments through casual messages and emojis.
One sequence allegedly shows pre-shared ratings matching BARC’s official weekly data exactly, a detail now considered potential evidence of insider leakage rather than guesswork.
A Two-Front Strategy: TRPs and Digital Manipulation
Investigators say the operation extended beyond television. The channel owner is believed to have spent crores on “phone-farming” facilities in Malaysia and Thailand, using clusters of devices to artificially inflate YouTube viewership. Paid social-media campaigns amplified the false perception of surging popularity, creating a digital halo that mirrored the manipulated TRP spike.
To justify the sudden rise in ratings, the channel reportedly claimed that the spike resulted from a landing-page placement on a minor cable network with only around 20,000 subscribers—a defence police now consider implausible in a state with 8.5 million cable connections.
Connecting the Dots: What the Viewership Data Reveals
The case took a decisive turn when Twentyfour News aired a chart showing a dramatic, unexplained surge in the viewership of an unnamed Kerala-based channel. The chart suggested a 125% jump between Week 28 and Week 40 of 2024.
While the channel was not named on air, the dataset offered a crucial clue.
Analysis of viewership data of Kerala News Channel viewership from Week 28 to Week 40 of 2024, which is the disputed period highlighted by Twentyfour News, matched the spike precisely to the performance curve of Reporter TV.
The Data Trail: How the Spike Mapped Out
During the disputed period:
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The unnamed channel starts at ~35 GRP in Week 28,
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Then surges to ~165 GRP by Week 33, a nearly 4× explosion,
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No other Malayalam news channel exhibits a comparable rise,
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The spike period overlaps almost exactly with the timeline during which leaked chats refer to pre-shared weekly numbers,
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Even after the peak, the channel stabilises at ~100 GRP — far above its earlier baseline.
This acceleration is statistically anomalous. In Kerala’s news market, GRP increases of such magnitude typically occur only during major statewide events that drive viewership up across all channels. Yet no such event occurred during this period that would explain one channel outperforming the market by 125%.
Despite the data patterns and the unusual GRP trajectory observed during the disputed period, it is important to underline that neither BARC India, the Kerala Police, nor Twentyfour News has officially named the channel or its management allegedly involved in the TRP manipulation case. In the absence of any formal identification from the authorities or the complainant, MediaNews4U does not wish to jump to the conclusion that Reporter TV is implicated in the scam. Our intention in this editorial is solely to present an analytical revelation based on publicly visible viewership trends and the disputed data window highlighted in the allegations, without asserting guilt or attributing wrongdoing.
