News Broadcasting
Jeevan TV to come to life on Thursday
MUMBAI: Jeevan TV the fifth Malayalam news channel, will begin telecasting 20 hours a day from Thursday.
The channel, promoted by the Catholic Church of Kerala, was formally launched on 14 July and is being run from a studio and uplinking centre located in Kerala’s commercial capital, Kochi.
The fifth entrant in a market which already has regional Doordarshan apart from Asianet, Surya and Kairali, Jeevan claims it will offer programmes that entertain while stressing the importance of moral values. Although the target of the channel is the family, soap operas will be conspicous by their absence. News and education shows will dominate the channel’s programming. The channel will serve as a forum for issue based discussions on topics otherwise considered taboo, say reports.
Jeevan TV managing director P C Cyriac has been quoted by the Economic Times as saying that the channel would not accept surrogate advertisements of liquor. The channel will be telecast through the APR-1 satellite and will have a footprint which covers India, South East Asia, Australia, Middle East and Central Europe.
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.
