News Broadcasting
Peter Horrocks appointed BBC TV news head
MUMBAI: The BBC’s Panorama editor Peter Horrocks has been appointed head of television news at the corporation. He replaces Roger Mosey, who recently moved to become the BBC’s director of sport.
BBC director of news Helen Boaden said: “Peter has a superb track record in television journalism. He also has a deep understanding of the television audience and the competitive pressures we face as technology offers our audiences more choice of news than ever before.”
In 1997 and 2005 Horrocks won Bafta awards for editing Newsnight and The Power of Nightmares. Horrocks joined the Corporation in 1981 as a news trainee and went on to work for Newsnight, where he later returned as editor.
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.
