News Broadcasting
Raj TV to celebrate 75 years of Tamil Cinema
MUMBAI: Tamil television channel Raj TV is celebrating 75 years of Tamil cinema with a slew of programmes from 5 April to 19 June, including screening of 75 best films in the language. The first Tamil talkie, Kalidas, was released on 14 March in 1931.
“We hold copy rights to nearly 2,000 films. We propose to telecast these 75 films as part of the celebrations,” Raj TV directors M Ravindran and M Raghunathan said.
The channel is also planning a glittering star-studded award function to culminate the celebration phase. The event will be held in Chennai on 24 June, where 75 veteran contributors to Tamil cinema would be honoured.
‘Chitra’ Lakshman, film producer-director, who is also associated with the celebrations, said each year on March 14 awards would be given away in the name of late Nataraja Mudaliar, the man who was responsible for the first silent Tamil movie Keeshavadam.
According to Lakshman, the channel will also institute an award of Rs 1,00,000 each to a dozen low budget movies in Tamil as an annual feature.
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.
