News Broadcasting
Warner, News Corp, Viacom vie for Hallmark US
MUMBAI: Crown Media, which owns and operates Hallmark US has said that it has been approached by several parties regarding the acquisition of Hallmark.
Earlier this year in March Crown Media had sold the international arm of Hallmark for $ 242 million to a group of investors comprised of Providence Equity Partners, 3i and UK television executive David Elstein.
Parties said to be interested in buying Hallmark Channel are News Corp, Viacom, Time Warner Comcast and Scripps Networks.
The News Corp bid was confirmed by News Corp president Peter Chernin last week. Media reports further indicate that Disney is not interested in the acquisition.
Hallmark Channel’s ad revenue was up 37 per cent to $33.6 million. The network also upped its subscriber fee revenue by 90 per cent year-over-year, to $4.6 million.
The bids so far for Hallmark and its 71 million subscribers have ranged from $1.65 billion to $1.8 billion, which would also cover $886 million in debt. That means those offers would assign a value of only about $1 billion to the Hallmark network itself, a price some network insiders think is too low.
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.
