News Broadcasting
Essel Corp appoints Mehraj Dube as deputy VP
MUMBAI: The Subhash Chandra led Essel Group is seeing many high profile resignation and reappointment amongst its top management. It is recently learnt that Mehraj Dube has joined as the deputy VP at Essel Group.
Dube will report directly to the chairman’s office and will closely look at the various projects of the group. He is posted at Zee Media Corporation Limited. A source also reveals that Dube will play a vital role in Zee Business after few months.
An award winning broadcaster, Dube is admired for his original thinking ability, for a creative approach to find solutions and implement ideas.
In his last role, he served at The Statesman as vice president and has also led the communications strategy for Sir HN Reliance Foundation Hospital in Mumbai. With experience in news reporting, news presenting, current affairs debate shows, show designing, marketing and content positioning.
Dube has experience of anchoring Money Mantra show on NDTV Profit and have received a lot of respect and attention as an anchor for NDTV India’s Hindi prime time shows like Top 5, India 9 Baje, Sabse Bada Rupaiya, etc. He has also worked with Star News for nearly five years at various positions in different teams and reported on variety of subjects from economy to politics from films to environment added a great deal of experience to my media skills.
The appointment has come at the time when Essel Group Chairman and noted philanthropist Subhash Chandra has been elected to the Rajya Sabha as an independent candidate from Haryana.
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:Â 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.
