News Broadcasting
Sa Re Ga Ma India diversifies into home video business
MUMBAI: The Rs 2 billion music major – Sa Re GA Ma India Limited (SIL) has decided to diversify into home video and digital downloading business. The company will be venturing into the business in association with US based Paramount Studio and Microsoft Inc.
The deal between SIL and Paramount was signed a week ago and with the Microsoft on 13 September.
The company incurred a loss of approximately Rs 210 million during the last fiscal and had to resort to a number of strategic decisions, which helped it to earn a profit before tax of Rs 85 million at the end of the first quarter. SIL had recorded a loss of over Rs 50 million in the corresponding period of last year.
SIL vice chairman Sanjeev Goenka has been quoted in media reports as saying that under the new contract with Paramount, a number of world-class home videos and other English blockbusters would soon be released in the domestic market. According to him, joining Microsoft will help SIL to make available its music videos to music sites like I tunes, Real Rhapsody and Napster.
The first multi-million SIL venture Tumsa Nahin Dekha is ready for release. Goenka said that the firm’s maiden Bengali movie would hit the screens in January next year.
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.
