News Broadcasting
Viacom looking to acquire social networking site Bebo
MUMBAI: In a bid to connect better with youth US media firms are looking to buy social networking sites. Last year, News Corp plonked down $580 million for MySpace.
Now media reports indicate that Viacom is looking to acquire Bebo, a social networking site. In the UK, reports indicate that it has overtaken MySpace. In the US, though it has fewer users. It has 25 million users globally compared to around 90 million for MySpace.
On Bebo, members can stay in touch with their college friends, connect with friends, share photos, discover new interests and just hang out. Reports indicate that it also provides video sharing (via VideoEgg widgets) and built-in Skype presence. While the designs may be more controlled than MySpace pages, most of Bebo’s success seems to arise from network effects – users join Bebo because everyone else is using the site.
The founders of Bebo are said to be looking at upwards of a billion dollars. British Telecom’s offer of around $400 million was reportedly turned down. For the week ending 5 August, Bebo was the most visited social network in the UK, and its market share of visits has grown 17 per cent in the past two weeks. 1 in every 135 UK visits goes to Bebo, which is now the 11th most visited site on the Internet. Viacom was also said to have been looking at one stage to acquire Facebook the second largest social networking site in the US.
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.
