News Broadcasting
Shin Sat signs $390 m. loan deal for iPSTAR-1
MUMBAI: Asia’s number two satellite operator Shin Satellite Plc. of Thailand today announced it had signed a $390 million loan deal for its long in gestation iPSTAR-1 project.
The announcement comes over two years (August 2000) after Shin Sat awarded the contract for the design and construction of iPSTAR-1 to Space Systems/Loral (SS/L). iPSTAR-1 is a high-powered geostationary satellite to be used for broadband communications applications.
Shin Sat announced that it has signed with the Export-Import Bank of the United States (“Ex-Im Bank”) and Compagnie Francaise d’Assurance pour la Commerce Extrieur de France (COFACE) agreements for loan guarantee facilities of a total of $ 265 million. Shin Sat has also signed a $ 125 million syndicated commercial bank facility arranged jointly by BNP Paribas and Citibank/SalomonSmithBarney. The credit support from the Ex-Im Bank and Coface will be in the form of a guarantee facility provided by Citibank and BNP Paribas.
The credit support from the Ex-Im Bank represents approximately 85 per cent of US content, mostly for the payment of the satellite’s construction by SS/Loral. Support from COFACE will cover 85 per cent of the cost of launching the satellite on Arianespace from French Guyana, an official release says.
The Ex-Im support effectively makes iPSTAR the only broadband satellite project in the world to receive full financing, the release asserts. The company expects to receive iPSTAR-1 by the end of 2003 and see it fully operational in early 2004. In the meantime, Shin Satellite has deployed gateways in several important markets in this Asia-Pacific region.
Shin Sat will use iPSTAR-1, a satellite with a hybrid Ka-/Ku-band communications payload, to provide direct-to-desktop, last-mile services, including new multi-media and data services to customers in Asia, India, and Australia.
With total satellite power of approximately 14 kW, iPSTAR-1 will provide 100 beams in the Ku-band and the Ka-band – to deliver broad coverage from its orbital location at 1200 East longitude. iPSTAR-1 is designed to provide 12 years of uninterrupted service life.
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.
