News Broadcasting
Chernin visit boosts buzz that News Corp exploring film prodn. in India
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: The $ 24 billion News Corporation COO, Peter Chernin, came, saw and will be going back from India more or less satisfied.
On a short visit to India, as part of his Asia tour, Chernin arrived in Mumbai on Thursday to have a first hand look at Stars Indian ops and met up with industry representatives, including joint venture partners, and advertisers.
The News Corp No. 2 is slated to fly out of India tomorrow. He was accompanied on his India visit by Star Group CEO, Michelle Gutherie.
News pan-Asian venture ,Star, is on a strong financial wicket fuelled essentially by revenue growth from India.
According to information available with Indiantelevision.com, the News Corp top honcho, considered to be only next to chairman, Rupert Murdoch, in the company, yesterday exchanged notes with some top Indian film producers too.
Its reported that Chernin met up with top people from Balaji, Stars content partner, yesterday. Star holds 26 per cent stake in the production company that has given the network the bulk of its television hits.
Though Star is tightlipped on such meetings, industry observers indicated that the meeting with film producers is certainly interesting; indicating that News Corp company ,20th Century Fox, might explore getting into movie production in India, either independently or in association with local companies.
20th Century Fox, producers of blockbusters like Independence Day and Titanic, which shuttered its distribution arm in India early this year, had previously never forayed into film production here.
“During the quarter, we launched and heavily promoted a new weekend lineup on Star Plus, including several new and higher costing shows, News Corps chief financial officer, David DeVoe, was quoted by MPA as saying.Ratings from KBC2 have been very strong, giving us the confidence that Star will deliver sizable profit growth for this fiscal year (FY ending June 2006),”he added.
News Corps Q1 FY 2006 (September 2006 quarter) earnings, reported 11 November, has shown 19 per cent Y/Y growth in operating income to $ 909 million, driven by reduced losses at satellite pay TV platform Sky Italia and continued growth from the companys film and cable businesses, including India.News Corporation had total assets as of approximately $ 55 billion and total annual revenues of approximately $ 24 billion 30 June, 2005.
Star Groups turnover for the period grew by 22 per cent Y/Y, driven primarily by advertising revenue at Star Plus and by higher subscription revenues from new channel offerings in India and international distribution of several Star channels, the Hong Kong-based Media Partners Asia has stated in its latest newsletter.
Other joint venture partners of News Corp in India include the Kolkata-based ABP group, controlled by the Sarkar family, and the Tatas, with whom theres a JV for a proposed DTH service in India.
News Corporation is a diversified international media and entertainment company with operations in eight industry segments: filmed entertainment; television; cable network programming; direct broadcast satellite television; magazines and inserts; newspapers; book publishing; and other. The activities of News Corporation are conducted principally in the United States, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, Asia and the Pacific Basin.
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.
