News Broadcasting
Taj TV bags Pakistan cricket rights
MUMBAI: It was always on the cards but now it’s official. Taj Television (parent company of Ten Sports) has secured the telecast rights for all cricket to be played in Pakistan for the next five years.
The deal signed between the Pakistan Cricket board (PCB) and Taj TV gives the broadcaster promoted by Sharjah’s Abdurrahman Bukhatir the rights to all international matches hosted by the PCB for five years from April 2003 till the end of 2008 for a reported $42.6 million.
Under its current deal with TWI, the PCB receives about $11 million, and TWI bid offered a minimum of $30 million to retain the rights. Taj TV won in a bidding process that attracted interest from six groups.
With the sewing up of this deal, Taj now has the telecast rights for Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Sharjah and Morocco.
The telecast begins with (in theory) India’s scheduled tour of Pakistan in April. Of course, there’s next to no chance of that happening. With India’s non-participation a foregone conclusion, the PCB has reportedly invited both Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe to tour Pakistan.
The next telecast after that will be when Bangladesh tours Pakistan in September followed by South Africa in October.
Ten Sports broadcasts in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
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.
