It was meant to be – and it proved to be an evening of rare illumination and insight. The dais was awesome and the assembly – august. However, this did not surprise anybody, as everyone knows that whenever The Indian Television Academy beckons – the best come flocking.

The occasion this time was the ITA symposium on the TRP’s. It was, as Anu Ranjan, the ITA President lucidly put, ‘to understand the most curious’ phenomenon of our times – the Television Rating Points.’ She further elaborated, ‘some swear by it – some swear at it… some call it the only benchmark for successful Television - some dismiss it as nothing but a lot of hogwash’.

To deliberate upon the enigma of TRP’s there was a distinguished panel comprising Mr. Aloke Banerjee, Head of Marketing, Britannia Industries Limited and COO, Bombay Dyeing – Mr. Andrey Purushottam, Managing Director, Starcom Worldwide India – Mr. Ashish Bhasin, President, Initiative Media – Mr. B.V Pradeep, Head of CMI (Consumer & Market Insight) and Regional CMI Leader, HPC (Home & Personal Care) Asia, Hindustan Lever Ltd. – Ms. Jasmin Sorabjee, Vice President, Mediacom – Mr. L.V Krishnan, CEO TAM India – Ms. Meenakshi Madhvani, CEO – India and Regional Director – Asia Pacific, Carat Media Services India Pvt. Ltd, who was also the moderator for the Symposium – Mr. Mallikarjun Das, Manager, Media, Asian Paints India Ltd – Ms. Savithri Swaminathan, Chief Manager, ICICI Bank – Mr. Shashi Mandapaty, Country Media Manager, Procter and Gamble – Mr. Sunil Lulla, Executive Vice President, Sony Entertainment Television – Mr. Tarun Katial, Senior Vice President, Content and Communication, Star India Pvt. Ltd. Chairing the proceedings was Mr. M.V. Kamath, CEO, Prasar Bharati.

The audience was awash with top-notch Producers, Directors, Channel Representatives, Corporate Houses and Media Agencies and Planners. There were producers of the stature of Prem Kishen, Prem Sagar, Binaiferr and Sonjhay Kohli, Neena Gupta, Anupam Kalidhar, Vipul Shah, Tony Singh, Sanjeev Sharma, Shrishti Arya, etc. In the directors, there were Manjul Sinha, Ajai Sinha, Vinta Nanda and others. The corporate presence was marked by Avinash Pant and Arnab Roi of Coca Cola, K.B.S. Anand of Asian Paints, Aslam Karmali of Philips, Ramesh Karra of Johnson & Johnson among others. Then there were Harish Dayani of Saregama/ HMV, Ganesh Jain of Venus and the Channel honchos like Raminder Singh of In-Mumbai, Sandeep Singh of SAB TV and so on.