News Broadcasting
Second edition of MTV Asia Awards scheduled for January
MUMBAI: MTV Asia’s second awards ceremony will be held on 24 January 2003 in Singapore. The channel has announced that Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter who has released his first solo album Now or Never is the first international artiste confirmed to perform at the event.
The region wide promotion campaign kicks off this month with the 360 degree marketing approach. This will involve on air and off air elements as well as on ground events. The awards will be seen by a live audience of over 7000 people and will be broadcast to over 150 million people across the globe.
In all, 19 trophies are to be handed out. The inaugral ceremony this year had seen a whopping 17.8 million votes being cast online. The Backstreet Boys’ video The Call won favourite video last time around. Panasonic has returned as the regional sponsor. Toyota Motor Corporation has joined the electronic manafacturer as the official sponsor. SMART Communications returns as partner sponsor in the Phillipines.
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.
