News Broadcasting
Prasar Bharati to beef up DD, AIR news operations with fresh recruitments
MUMBAI: Prasar Bharati is strengthening its manpower for news coverage in All India Radio (AIR) and Doordarshan. Responding to a written query on the subject, minister of information and broadcasting and Parliamentary affairs P R Dasmunsi said in the Lok Sabha that the Prasar Bharati board had approved the proposal to position Part Time Correspondents (PTC) in all those districts of the country where regular AIR correspondents are not posted.
According to Dasmunsi, there are about 90 full time correspondents/editors and 419 PTCs posted/positioned across the country and the process of selection of PTCs in respect of remaining 150 districts headquarters is underway.
“With this, Prasar Bharati will have correspondents in all the district headquarters of the country. Doordarshan News has a network of Stringers who, along with the PTCs of AIR, provides news inputs from various districts in the country. Besides, Doordarshan regular TV correspondents/news reporters are also deployed to gather important news from time to time for inclusion in the news bulletins telecast by Doordarshan,” Dasmunsi said.
Dasmunsi informed that, AIR and Doordarshan tried to cover all important news events across the country with its limited manpower and support. “Some events in far off places which are not covered due to infrastructure and manpower shortages are covered by subscribing to news agencies,” he said.
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.
