News Broadcasting
Raised forecasts spur News Corp’s channel plans
MUMBAI: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, which raised its forecast for the 2003-04 fiscal after its fiscal third quarter net income rose 69 per cent to $465 million, now sounds concrete about their plans to unveil new cable channels.
News Corp., which owns the Fox television operations, is planning to launch a cable TV channel by the end of this year.
According to News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, the company will start with a Fox channel in 2004 and will decide on more channels after that.Murdoch told Fox News that the company is pondering a business, entertainment or sports channel. Other prospects are channels devoted to weather and or Hispanic-interest programming.
News Corp. has recently gained control of satellite TV operator DirecTV. This gives Murdoch the advantage of 12.5 million ready-customers when he launches the new channel, which Fox will push to get carried by other cable and satellite operators.
The Fox News Channel has by now overtaken CNN as the most-watched 24-hour-news cable channel. Fox News also hoasts the five top-rated cable business shows.
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.
