News Broadcasting
Marathi news channel Maharashtra 1 set to beam on Tata Sky
MUMBAI: The Nikhil Waghle led 24×7 Marathi news channel Maharashtra 1, which started its service in September last year, is all set to hop on to the Tata Sky direct to home (DTH) platform.
Tata Sky will be the first DTH platform that the channel will mark its presence on.
Maharashtra 1 will be a free-to-air channel available on channel number 802.
“We are currently present on all the multi-system operators (MSOs) except UCN Nagpur. Now with a presence on Tata Sky, we have made a move towards DTH. We decided to go ahead with Tata Sky because it’s a premium platform and fits the bill for a premium channel like ours,” said a channel official.
News Broadcasting
News TV viewership jumps 33 per cent as West Asia war draws audiences
BARC Week 8 data shows news share rising to 8 per cent despite T20 World Cup
NEW DELHI: Even as individual television news channel ratings remain under a temporary pause, the genre itself is seeing a clear surge in audience attention.
According to the latest data from Broadcast Audience Research Council India, television news recorded a 33 per cent jump in genre share in Week 8 of 2026, covering February 28 to March 6.
The news genre accounted for 8 per cent of total television viewership during the week, up from 6 per cent the previous week. The spike in attention coincided with escalating geopolitical tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, which have kept global headlines firmly fixed on West Asia.
The rise is notable because it came at a time when cricket was dominating television screens. The high-stakes stages of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, including the Super 8 fixtures and semi-finals, were being broadcast during the same period.
Despite the cricket frenzy, viewers appeared to be toggling between sport and global affairs, boosting the overall share of news programming.
The surge in genre share comes even as the government has enforced a one-month pause on publishing ratings for individual news channels. The move followed regulatory scrutiny of the television ratings ecosystem.
While channel-level rankings remain temporarily out of sight, the genre-level data suggests that when global tensions escalate, audiences continue to turn to television news for real-time updates.
