News Broadcasting
Rohit Gupta is business head HBO, AXN
MUMBAI: The addition of English movie channel HBO to the Sony Entertainment bouquet has led to some corporate restructuring within SET.
Rohit Gupta, executive V-P sales and revenue management, has been given additional charge as channel and business head of AXN and HBO. Directly reporting to Gupta is V-P programming and production Nachiket Pantvaidya, who has been shifted to ad sales and redesignated V-P sales and marketing English channels.
Pantvaidya will be coordinating ad sales activities for both HBO and AXN, Gupta said. Rohit Bhandari, assistant V-P – sales and marketing, who is responsible for managing AXN’s business interests in India, will continue to do so.
Regarding the changes that Pantvaidya’s shift from the programming side would entail, SET channel business head Sunil Lulla was unavailable for comment, despite efforts by indiantelevision.com to contact him. From the looks of things it appears though that Lulla will directly be leading all new programming initiatives, assisted principally by SET director on air programming Anupama Mandloi.
Effective 1 January, 2003, SET India will manage the advertising sales for HBO and distribute the service through its SET/Discovery One Alliance joint venture in India 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.
