News Broadcasting
Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Middelhoff ousted
MUMBAI: German media giant Bertelsmann’s chief executive Thomas Middelhoff was forced to step down yesterday due to a fierce dispute over his strategy.
A report from Reuters states that Germany’s privately-owned media giant would replace Middelhoff with its media services head Gunter Thielen. Middelhoff’s attempts to modernise and take the secretive newspaper and book publisher public in an attempt to challenge fellow media conglomerates AOL Time Warner and Disney faced stiff opposition from Bertelsmann’s old guard. The report indicates that differences regarding the future direction of the company between Middelhoff and the company’s chief shareholders were mounting.
The announcement comes close on the heels of the resignations of Vivendi Universal chief executive Jean-Marie Messier and AOL Time Warner chief operating officer Robert Pittman earlier this month.
A report in a German newspaper indicated that Middelhoff would head the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom.
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.
