News Broadcasting
Asia-Pacific news website launched
AsiaNet, a consortium of news organisations in the Asia Pacific region, has launched a website – http://www.asianetnews.net. The aim is to provide a regional resource primarily for media, corporate, government and public relations professionals.
It features daily content drawn from Asia Pulse, the real time news service, and from the most prominent news agencies of the region. Full text, unedited news releases from worldwide clients – AsiaNet’s core business – are also stored on the site. Many of them are translated versions.
This is an exclusive agreement among the region’s top news agencies. It brings together all prominent news points from India / Pakistan in the west, Japan/China/South Korea in the north and Australia/New Zealand in the south-east, ensuring pinpoint delivery – by wire, fax and email – to general and specialist media in 34 countries and regions of the Asia Pacific.
The website, highlighting the service and generating immediate news content, profiles all the AsiaNet consortium countries, and is also linked to affiliate news organisations in the United States, Canada and UK/Europe.
The AsiaNet consortium is: AAP (Australia), Antara (Indonesia), Bernama (Malaysia), Infoquest (Thailand), Kyodo JBN (Japan), NCN (Hong Kong), NZPA (New Zealand), PNA (Philippines), PPI (Pakistan), PTI (India), UNB (Bangladesh), VNA (Vietnam), Xinhua (China), Yonhap (South Korea).
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.
