Saina, Srikanth advance at Badminton World Championships
Nanjing (China), July 31 : Indian stars Saina Nehwal and Kidambi Srikanth won their respective matches at the Badminton World Championships here on Tuesday.
Saina defeated Aliye Demirbag of Turkey in straight games to enter the third round of the women's singles category. Saina fought off a brave effort from her Turkish opponent to cruise to a 21-17, 21-18 victory in just 39 minutes.
The opening game saw a tough battle in the early stages before Saina produced a four-point burst to lead 14-10. She held on to the advantage till the end to win the game.
Saina showcased her class in the second game, scoring at ease as she romped to a win.
The Hyderabad-based Indian is expected to face a tougher challenge in the next round where she will meet an experienced opponent in fourth seed Ratchanok Intanon of Indonesia.
Ratchanok staged a strong comeback to win a tough encounter against the impressive Mia Blichfeldt of Denmark.
The nail-biting see-saw battle, which lasted an hour and 16 minutes, saw Ratchanok carve out a 16-21, 22-20, 21-10 victory.
In the men's singles category, Srikanth took 37 minutes to defeat Nhat Nguyen of Ireland in straight games.
The Indian, who advanced to the second round, did not have to sweat too much on his way to a 21-15, 21-16 victory over his unseeded opponent.
Srikanth forced the early advantage, taking four consecutive points to open up a 7-2 lead before increasing the gap to 11-5. Nguyen staged a strong fight back with two four-point streaks of his own to level the scores at 13-13.
He subsequently took a slender lead at 15-14, but the Indian came up with an impressive run of seven back to back points to take the opening game.
The second game saw a neck and neck battle till the halfway stage when the two players went into the break with Srikanth in possession of a 11-9 lead.
The Indian came out all guns blazing after the resumption, taking six consecutive points to open up a comfortable 17-10 advantage. Although Nguyen closed the gap to within two points, Srikanth produced another late burst to wrap up the match.
Srikanth will be up against Pablo Abian of Spain in the next round. The unseeded Spaniard defeated Toby Penty of England 21-18, 21-6 in his campaign opener.
In the mixed doubles competition, the unseeded Indian pair of Saurabh Sharma and Anoushka Parikh lost to eighth seeds Chan Peng Soon and Goh Liu Ying of Malaysia by an 18-21, 11-21 margin in 36 minutes.
It was curtains for Pranaav Jerry Chopra and N. Sikki Reddy as well, since they lost 16-21, 4-21 to 12th seeds Hafiz Faizal and Gloria Emanuelle Widjaja of Indonesia.
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Union government assumes full control over TV ratings, TRAI role curtailed: Report
New Delhi: The Union government has assumed full control over television audience measurement, removing the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) from oversight of the ratings system that underpins the country’s ₹36,000 crore television advertising market, according to a report published on Wednesday.
The report in Mint said the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) now has exclusive authority over the framework governing how television ratings are measured and regulated. TRAI had been entrusted with oversight of TV ratings in 2012 during the UPA government’s tenure. TRAI is no longer mentioned in the relevant policy document, effectively vesting sole authority in the MIB.
The report said TRAI will continue to regulate other aspects of broadcasting, including channel pricing, advertising caps, interconnection and distribution norms, service quality and compliance standards. Its role in determining how ratings agencies track viewing behaviour has been withdrawn.
Television Rating Points (TRPs), which reflect viewership patterns, guide advertisers in deciding where to allocate spending across channels and time slots.
A government source quoted in the report said the ministry could modify TRAI’s decisions even when the regulator oversaw broadcasting.
A former CEO of Prasar Bharati told the newspaper that the MIB has historically regulated rating agencies through licensing and guidelines, and by holding them accountable under existing norms.
During its tenure overseeing ratings, TRAI had taken decisions affecting the broadcast sector, which included capping advertising time at 12 minutes per hour following complaints about excessive commercial breaks and it now remains unclear how these matters will be addressed under the revised arrangement.
Satya N. Gupta, former principal advisor at TRAI, was quoted as saying that merging regulatory functions with policy oversight and removing an independent regulator from the process was a retrograde step.
TRAI’s involvement in broadcasting had earlier attracted criticism as well. In 2012, its consultation paper on quantitative limits on television advertising was viewed by some as overlapping with the Advertising Standards Council of India’s code. Subsequent recommendations covering television audience measurement, ownership of news channels and issues such as paid news had also raised concerns among sections of the industry.
Television ratings have faced scrutiny in recent years, including during the controversy involving the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), where officials of the ratings body were prosecuted over allegations of manipulation of viewership data.
