TRPs are very much essential for a show, online viewing and showing it as popularity is not useful to earn money.
I will tell you an example: suppose a bollywood movie is released and no one went to watch the movie in theather due to different reasons but online torrentz downloads created a record clicks... will you call that movie a block buster movie or flop movie?
TRPS and online viewing is equal to watching the movie in theater and downloading the same movie from torrentz
TRPs decides the price of an AD coming on TV during the show time. depends on TRPs the price and length of the AD will be decided. Even if they show the promo of a show will cost them (AD time they can show at that time)... so channel will proritize the show promos based on TRPs.
If amount channel gains in the form of ADs is less than the amount they are investing on a show then channel will close the show to save themselves from loses
whatever we say but at the end TRPs does matter
colors at one point will start feeling RR has no TRP audience except online viewers, so they consider our tweets and comments on FB as spam... we cannot do anything other than try to watch the show on TV and raise the TRPs.