News Broadcasting
BBC World to go pay from mid-June; price undecided
MUMBAI: BBC World is going pay. It will encrypt its feed to South Asia, beaming off PanAmSat10 satellite, from 15 June.
BBC World director of distribution and business development Jeff Hazell confirmed to Indiantelevision.com the plans to go pay, but refused to divulge the rate that will be charged from the cable ops.
“We do not have a direct relationship with the consumer. How the cable operators choose to package and bundle the price for the service is entirely up to them,” Hazell said.
However, information collated from cable ops in Delhi and Mumbai reveals that BBC World has indicated a price of Rs 5.50 to its distribution dealers. The price might ultimately settle somewhere between Rs 4.50 Rs 5.50, a cable operator in Delhi opined.
The boxes will be made available to key MSOs, cable operators and hoteliers in South Asia to facilitate the move to an encrypted mode, though a section of cable ops in Delhi said it is yet to hear from BBC World on its plans to go pay.
“As a commercial channel, the transition from free-to-air to a subscription model is a natural progression for BBC World in South Asia. This change is in response to the dynamic and rapidly expanding cable TV and DTH satellite market across the region,” BBC World regional director of distribution and business development, Europe, Middle-East & South Asia Gerry Ritchie said.
Amongst the 25-odd news channels, both at the national and regional level, only a handful are pay channels in the real sense. The news channel that are pay include Zee News, NDTV 24X7, NDTV Profit, CNBCTV18 and Times Now.
BBC World South Asia head of distribution and business development Amit Upadhayay feels that his team of 10 professionals are ready for the new challenge. But what about carriage fee?
According to Upadhayay, “The decision to go pay was taken after close interaction with cable operators, distributors and MSOs. We have not been paying carriage fee till date and people in the market understand that. We want to partner with cable operators and work closely with them to have a mutually benefit relationship.”
Pointing out that the Indian distribution market is emerging as a substantial subscription market for both Indian and international broadcasters, Upadhayay said response from distributors have been
“encouraging.”
“They feel the channel is a strong brand as it serves an important and influential audience across the region,” he added.
BBC World is presently available to 15 million Indian households and 60,000 hotel rooms across the country. The channel’s advertising sales did well in 2005.
The change in the status of BBC World will be communicated through the channel’s website on-screen scroll, which should start running in a few days time.
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.
