News Broadcasting
Global broadband households will more than double between 2005 and 2010: InStat
MUMBAI: Worldwide broadband households will more than double between 2005 and 2010, growing from about 194 million in 2005 to more than 413 million by 2010.
Market research firm In-Stat notes that of all broadband households today, 12.8 per cent are already regularly viewing professional content via online content aggregators.
Traditional broadcast TV networks are finally figuring out that they need to capitalise on “all this personalization stuff” or they will have deep trouble ahead.
The Pay-TV services have realised that personalisation is the trend for the future, and they won’t be left behind while TV keeps expanding onto the Internet.
Although online content aggregators are in the early experimentation stages of rolling out video services, they will have some dramatic revenue-generating opportunities in the next five year. The worldwide market for online content services is expected to expand by a factor of 10, growing from about 13 million households during 2005 to more than 131 million households by 2010, the high-tech market research firm says.
In-Stat analyst Gerry Kaufhold says, “AOL, Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Apple, major broadcast TV networks, Pay-TV services and local TV stations are all working on ways to blend their video assets with personalised TV services.
“The future of television is slowly being defined online, where the big Internet portals are finding ways to blend professional video with their high-touch services that follow consumers from screen to screen during the course of a typical day.”
Although there has been much hype about multimedia home networks, low-cost portable storage devices that can move content throughout the home via sneakernet may win the favour of consumers because luggable media provides low-cost, high availability and convenience.
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.
