News Broadcasting
ABC News veteran Peter Jennings dies at 67
MUMBAI: US broadcaster ABC News’ veteran anchor, Peter Jennings, has died at age 67. He had announced in April that he was suffering from lung cancer.
The Canadian-born broadcaster died at his home in New York on Sunday. He had worked with the ABC network since 1964, after coming south from Canada where he had started his journalistic career. Media reports indicate he anchored World News for over two decades. Jennings established the first American television news bureau in the Arab world in 1968, serving as ABC News’ bureau chief for Beirut for seven years. He had a major role in the network’s coverage of the Summer Olympics in Munich, when Israeli athletes were taken hostage.
After the events of 9/11 four years ago, Jennings anchored ABC broadcasts for more than 60 hours. The coverage garnered awards and critical acclaim. TV Guide called him “the centre of gravity.” Like his competitors, Dan Rather at NBC and Tom Brokaw at CBS, he became an itinerant figure, jumping around the globe and the country from the scene of one major story to the next. On screen, he exuded calm and authority which was enriched by a certain elegance and the driest sense of humor on occasion.
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.
