News Broadcasting
Viacom close to spinning off video rental chain Blockbuster
MUMBAI: Having failed to find a buyer for its Blockbuster video-rental business media conglomerate Viacom is said to be nearing a decision to spin it off.
Viacom has been trying to find a buyer for Blockbuster since last year. The home video market is rapidly losing favour among the movie viewers as the cost of DVDs are coming down and cable ops are coming with attractive video on demand offerings in the US.
Viacom has an 82 per cent stake and reports indicate that it would not be in the best interests of the company to try selling it to the public as newly issued Blockbuster shares because there would be scant demand for the stock. A final decision is expected within the next fortnight.
Blockbuster is also facing insurmountable problems in China. Therefore the Dallas based company has decided to withdraw from Hong Kong and close its 24 stores in the city within the next 18 months as their leases expire. The company found the store lease costs to be very high.
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.
