News Broadcasting
Uday Shankar takes charge as editor of Star News
MUMBAI: Former TV Today Television Network news director Uday Shankar had his first day at the office today as he formally took charge as editor and director of news at Star News.
Shankar took over from incumbent news director Sanjay Pugalia who, according to Star News president Ravina Raj Kohli, would be concentrating for the present on managing the election coverage of the channel.
As the content head of Star News, Shankar would be based in Mumbai, though there are talks of refurbishing the Delhi bureau too, by inducting some more senior people.
Kohli says Shankar’s broad brief is to carry forward the channel tag line “pace, punch, credibility and impact”, with the ultimate aim of pivoting Star News into the Number 1 position in the news sweepstakes.
Just getting Shankar may not ensure that Aaj Tak can be toppled from the top slot as the success story of the channel, which has garnered over 50 per cent of the market share, would be a difficult ballgame to replicate even by Shankar. A journalist by profession, Shankar has worked in several media houses, including the Zee News.
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.
