News Broadcasting
ETV Bangla earmarks Rs 150 mn capital expenditure for its Bengali news channel
KOLKATA: Earlier in January, Indiantelevision.com reported how the Bengali general entertainment channel ETV Bangla of the Network 18 group is looking at a news foray. The latest word is the Network has earmarked a capital expenditure of Rs 150 mln for launching a 24-hour Bengali news and current affairs channel.
The channel would be launched by March 15 and will have a team of 200 professionals, including journalists and technical staffs, said one of the editors of ETV.
The programming for the news channel will be uplinked from Hyderabad for the time being. By the end of the year, the company plans to set up a transmission system in Kolkata to be able to uplink directly. The company has already received a license from government authorities.
Dhrubajyoti Pramanik, formerly with ABP Ananda – a 24-hour news channel from the house of Kolkata headquartered ABP Group, will is joining as the Editor of ET’s Bengali news channel. “He is likely to join the organisation from 1 March,” said a reliable source from ETV.
An official from ETV Bangla said, “We had the set up and infrastructure for running a 24-hour news channel and now we will be using it. To run the news channel, around 200 people would be required.”
ETV Bangla, which airs three news bulletins at present, will no longer telecast news once the news channel is launched. ETV Bangla will strictly become a general entertainment channel (GEC) going forward, the official said.
Recently Viacom18, the 50:50 joint venture between US-based Viacom and India’s Network 18 Group, completed its acquisition in ETV Bangla. It should be noted that ETV Bangla, a part of the ETV Network group of channels, was launched in 1999.
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.
