There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Or, in the media world, free ads. Which is why a comprehensive dossier prepared by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on the “Yoga Day” media coverage had us puzzled: either because it’s majorly bullshitting, or because it’s pointing to a trend unheard of up until now.

The said dossier was first reported on by The Economic Times early this month. The ET report gave details on various sections it carried, particularly the “Compliance Report” with a section on “defaulters”. The focus of subsequent media reports, like in the DNA, remained on how the government was keeping a close watch on the media and how it reports.

Newslaundry got hold of a copy of the report to see what the fuss was all about and whether we’re really heading towards an Orwellian future.

Typed out in ghastly fonts and colours, with multiple pictures of the prime minister in various Yoga poses, the report gets interesting only midway with the section “Electronic Media Analytic”. The section gives an overview of yoga day coverage by private channels between June 15 and 21 as monitored by the Electronic Media Monitoring Centre, under the I&B Ministry.

“The centre pushed its entire human resource team from 15^th to 21^st June, 2015 for the micro-monitoring of the Yoga spots as per release order of Ministry of Ayush,” the report states.

Here “Yoga spots” are 20-second Yoga Day advertisements that the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) released to be aired on various private news and general entertainment channels.

This included four major English news channels — Times Now, NDTV, CNN IBN and India Today. And 11 Hindi news channels. To be fair, the Centre was only doing its job monitoring the number of spots carried since it is essentially a client that is paying news channels for carrying Yoga Day ads. (All corporate clients do the same.)

More interestingly, the report shows that all news channels except India News, Zee News (real shocker) and Aaj Tak carried more spots than allocated to them. The DAVP allocated a total of 63 ads and most news channels carried close to 100 ads. Typically, the DAVP allocates a set number of ads through a release order and payments are made accordingly. That means the government paid news channels for the 63 spots released and the extra spots carried by news channels were muft muft muft.

Obviously, happy at achieving this feat, the report makes a special mention of TV 100 that carried 161 spots against the allotted nine spots, “i.e 152 spots on courtesy basis”.

Given how cash-strapped the media industry is, such “courtesies” don’t quite make sense, especially for a government client. DAVP ads come at a much lower price. A 20-second spot can cost a corporate client as much as Rs 8,000 in the evening time slot. The DAVP ads, according to its rate card, can come at between Rs 600 to Rs 4,000 depending on the channel and time slot. So, why would channels air free ads at a substantial commercial loss? Times Now, NDTV 24/7, CNN IBN and India Today carried 32, 29, 19 and 14 extra spots in all, respectively.

Have the figures in the compliance report been cosmetically inflated by the bureaucracy to please the dispensation? Or have channels, umm, what’s the apt line for this occasion? Crawled when asked to bend?

We tried getting in touch with DAVP Director Madhu Nag for clarifications only to be asked to call back at a later time, time and again.

A former DAVP official, however, informs us on condition of anonymity, that usually TV channels play fewer ads than allocated to them because they make next to no money on them. “I’ve never seen a situation where TV channels have played more ads, it’s strange if they have done so.” The official added that while it is usual for the government to monitor ad spots, earlier they would use TAM to do so. “The EMCC is now being used to monitor ads and content — what channels are saying about Modi and so on — whereas it was set up only to monitor compliance to the Cable TV Regulation Act,” he claims, adding that the staff strength has been increased expressly for this purpose. “Monitoring content is the new normal.”

We also got in touch with executives in ads and sales department of the four English channels mentioned in the report and received mixed responses. Though no one was willing to come on record, some executives firmly denied the possibility of airing more ads.

One ads executive put it succinctly: “Aap do saabun ka paisa doge toh saabun hi milenge [if you give money for two soaps, you’ll only get two soaps]. It’s not possible for us to air more ads. Where will we get the money?”

Another stated that the channels follow the release order to a T. “There has to be something wrong with the report. Why will I play more ads that too for a government client? Kuch free milta hai kya? [can you get anything for free?].” Good question.

One of the executives, however, agreed that sometimes channels can play more ads if it’s for a good cause just to promote it. “If our inventories are free, we can use it to push out ads out of goodwill. There’s no pressure or anything. It’s just a good cause that the government is promoting.” That must be the “positivity” of the electronic media that the I&B report remarks on while noting that on the day of the event, TV channels carried more than the allocated spots. NDTV India and India TV top the charts among the major news channels carrying 20 spots as against the allotted nine spots, according to the report.

Insiders in the industry also say channels often go out of their way to be in the government’s good books. One very simple reason for doing so is that channels frequently flout rules for which they could be hauled up by the government.

For instance, according to current TRAI guidelines, a channel cannot show more than 12 minutes of ads per hour of programming – a directive that almost every channel brazenly flouts. Though monitoring of ad time is almost unheard of currently, a channel, if held up, can always get away by saying it had telecast government ads.  No free lunches, then?