I&B Ministry
Pathrabe to replace Narain as FTII director; no decision on Gajendra Chauhan
NEW DELHI: Even as the protest against the appointment of actor Gajendra Chauhan as chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) continues, former National Film Archives of India head Prashant Pathrabe has been appointed as the director of the Institute, replacing DJ Narain.
The Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry decided to replace Narain, who is considered popular with students, despite reprimands from the government.
Meanwhile, the protest against Chauhan’s appointment as FTII chairman has been going on for over a month now and has even seen multiple actors entering the fray either for or against him.
Many Bollywood celebrities including Salman Khan and his father Salim Khan, Ranbir Kapoor, Anupam Kher and Rishi Kapoor have expressed their opinion on the issue, siding with students.
FTII students have been protesting against government interference, saying that Chauhan who had enacted the role of Yudhishtra in the mega series Mahabharata, lacked qualification for the important post.
On the other hand, Narain’s term was to end at the end of July. He is a 1990 officer of the Indian Information Service.
Pathrabe has been in the media field for more than 18 years, having previously worked in Doordarshan News and All India Radio News in Mumbai. He has also been spokesperson for Southern Command, Pune.
Pathrabe, a MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, joined the Indian Information Service in 1993 after a stint in public and private sector companies. He is currently with the Press Information Bureau in Pune.
MUMBAI: When the numbers go silent, the noise on screen gets a little harder to measure. Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has extended the suspension of television rating data for news channels, directing Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) to withhold TRPs for another four weeks. The latest order, issued on March 31, 2026, builds on an earlier directive from March 6 that had paused ratings for a month. The ministry has clarified that the blackout will continue for four weeks or until further instructions are issued whichever comes earlier keeping the industry in a prolonged state of data drought.
The reasoning, officials suggest, lies far beyond domestic screens. With geopolitical tensions in West Asia continuing to escalate, the government has flagged concerns over how such developments could influence news consumption and presentation. The move is aimed at curbing excessive sensationalism and speculative coverage during what it describes as a sensitive global moment.
For the broadcast ecosystem, the absence of Television Rating Points (TRPs) is more than symbolic, it removes the industry’s primary scorecard. Ratings dictate advertising flows, shape editorial strategies and fuel the competitive pecking order among news channels. Without them, broadcasters are effectively operating without a public performance benchmark.
The timing only adds to the complexity. Amid a high-intensity global news cycle, channels must now navigate audience engagement without the weekly feedback loop that typically drives programming decisions. Advertisers, too, are left recalibrating, leaning on proxies such as brand strength, reach and distribution instead of hard viewership data.
While framed as a temporary regulatory intervention tied to maintaining public order, the extended suspension underscores a broader unease about the tone and direction of news coverage. For now, the ratings race is on pause but the battle for attention continues, just without a scoreboard.
