News Broadcasting
Prasar Bharati looking at relaunching DD News
Less than six months after Prasar Bharati shut down its Doordarshan News channel due to lack of viewership, the pubcaster is contemplating reviving it.
This was confirmed to indiantelevision.com by a senior Prasar Bharati official today. It needs noting that when DD News closed down on 26 January after 18 months on air, there were simply no takers for the channel despite the increased interest in news post-11 September. The idea then was to devote more time on DD1 to news and current affairs.
What seems to have brought around this turnaround in thinking seems to have been the communal strife that Gujarat state witnessed as well as the ongoing tensions with neighbouring Pakistan. The private news channels have gone from strength to strength following these events with blanket coverage of the events.
The government appears to have come round to the view that a dedicated news channel is an absolute must in these times of uncertainty to work as a vehicle to better represent the government’s side of the story.
Word of a rethink on DD News comes at a time when Doordarshan is working overtime to spruce up its new presentation team with the help of the BBC and there is a spurt of interest among private players to launch news channels.
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.
