News Broadcasting
Budget ignores broadcast sector: Anshuman Misra
MUMBAI: Turner International’s MD Anshuman Misra has expressed disappointment with the budget as reagrds the entertainment sector.
He said,” The government has not paid any heed to the requests of the broadcasting industry on service tax issue and raised it is a worrisome factor. Especially for a nascent industry like ours in India. We were hoping that the issue of five per cent tax would be addressed, but not this way. There is also the initial feeling that there is nothing in the budget in the form of duty rationalisation on components for set-top boxes. With conditonal access system regime about to be put in force, it was hoped that keeping in mind the financial burden on the consumers, the government would look into the issue and reduce the duties.”
Misra said that the budget was a letdown in light of the fact that one section of the government had said that the media and entertainment industry would be given a major fillip. On a more positive note, Misra noted that the finance minister touched upon several important factors like health and infrastrucuture and all these bode well for the country in the long run. “It is a forward-looking budget in a way, if we are not narrow enough to think only about our particular industry,” Misra said.
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.
