News Broadcasting
Toonz bags $4.5m Korean deal
MUMBAI: Kerala based Toonz Animation has inked a $ 4.5 million contract with the leading Seoul based Korean production house ANI21 Co Ltd to produce an animated television series Twin Princes.
The series, which includes a six-minute trailer and 52 episodes of twenty three minutes each, will be a blend of 2D and 3D animation.Toonz will have exclusive broadcast rights to the series in India for a period of 10 years. Production on the series will begin in May 2004 and is slated for completion in the year 2006.
The top brass of ANI21, president/general producer In-Hyung Hwang and international division head Iksu Zhun, recently visited the Toonz Studios in Trivandrum to shore up their relationship with Toonz and to explore prospects for further collaboration. The visiting delegation included key personnel from Apple Tree Films, which is involved in the merchandising of this series.
“We are thrilled to have Twin Princes on our production slate,” Toonz Animation India CEO P Jayakumar was quoted in a company statement. “This big-budget series has immense potential and will help us make a major headway in the global animation market,” he added.
The three year old production company ANI21 specialises in animation production, broadcast program planning and, character development and licensing. Based in Trivandrum’s Technopark, Toonz is known for the 26-episode animated television series The Adventures of Tenali Raman.
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.
