Justice Sujit Kumar Sinha of the Calcutta High Court has, by an order of injunction, restrained Bennett Coleman & Company Ltd from publishing any defamatory matter concerning Zee TV or any other likewise until further orders.

Zee TV had sent a legal notice against a news item published in The Economic Times in relation to TV rating points (TRPs). Not satisfied with the response from the newspaper, ATL filed a suit for damages. "We found the report--particularly the headline which stated that Sony was ahead of Zee--very offending and defamatory. The report was terribly one-sided as it did not represent Zee's point of view," said Ranjan Bakshi, spokesperson of Zee Network.

ATL had submitted to the court that The Economic Timesprinted a survey report alleged to have been conducted by TAM Media Research Private Ltd. An official Zee release said that the survey report published a rating of the top 60 programmes across the different channels during the period November 11 to December 5. One programme in the top 10 appeared three times, resulting in only seven programmes in the top 10. In the top 60 programmes in Delhi, a Hindi feature film appeared seven times while in Mumbai it appeared four times.

"The said rating is ex-facie, erroneous, misleading and biased in favour of certain channels and can't be relied upon," the release added.

Incidentally, broadcasters and agencies are expressing dissatisfaction over a two-currency TV ratings system which is feeding conflicting data. TAM, a joint venture between AC Nielsen and IMRB, has the backing of a joint industry body. INTAM, which is a division of ORG-MARG, is the second agency which supplies TV ratings data.