News Broadcasting
‘Lagaan’ takes Sony into Top 10
MUMBAI: There appear to be only two things that can make any sort of impression on the stranglehold that Star Plus has on the ratings – cricket and movies. For SET India, it was the Aamir Khan film Lagaan that brought some Diwali cheer for the channel with a top 10 ratings placing after a long gap.
The critically acclaimed Bollywood blockbuster aired on SET on 27 October and has come in at exactly Number 10 on the charts behind perennial toppers Kyunki…, Kahaani… and Kasauti Zindagi Kay. A point to note though is that with a total air time of five hours (7 pm to 12 midnight) TAM ratings of 7.6 has certainly proved a windfall for the channel. The ratings are for the 4+ TG across all markets for the week from 27 October to 02 November.
According to SET executive V-P Sunil Lulla, Lagaan’s 10.24 TVR for the key north, west and east territories makes it the highest rated film of the last 15 months on any C&S channel in both absolute and relative terms. Lagaan’s is not the highest TVRs the channel has garnered for a film in the not too recent past though. That credit goes to the patriotism-laced multi-starrer Border, which aired on the channel some two years ago. Referring to Border, Lulla said the market is far more complex today and therefore it was not possible to compare the performance of the two movies.
On the “Lagaan Maaf Contest”, a promotional campaign developed around the movie, Lulla said over 10,000 entries had been received till the time of the closing of the competition last Saturday.
In the contest, eleven winners selected through a random draw will get reimbursed their previous year’s income tax up-to-a maximum of Rs 50,000.
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.
