News Broadcasting
India in Top 4 of growing cable markets
MUMBAI: So much for those who have been critical of India’s buoyant cable TV sector which has been grown by sheer private enterprise and without any government support. India has emerged as among the Top Four cable TV markets in the world with its close to 50 million CATV subscriber base. This has been revealed in a study done by a US-based research firm In-Stat/MDR.
The top four countries in terms of total cable TV subscribers are China, United States, India and Germany.
The report has stated that cable TV globally grew at three per cent in 2003 which is its slowest growth in a decade. The North American cable TV market actually shrank a little in 2003, as several hundred thousand former cable subscribers either switched to satellite services or simply pulled the plug on cable.
Most of the new growth in cable TV is coming from Asia particularly from China and India that have been accounting for up to 60 per cent of all annual subscriber additions over the past three years, the report stated. It expects total cable TV subscribers to reach 395 million by 2007.
According to In-Stat/MDR cable TV subscriber growth will be fuelled by not only cable television operators ability to attract new subscribers to their traditional analog video services, but also migration to the recently deployed digital video, voice, and data services. The report states that global digital cable TV subscriber growth raced ahead 22 per cent in 2003, with the North American digital cable TV subscriber market increasing by 20 per cent.
Even with rapid digital subscriber growth, the modest total subscriber growth rate is forcing many cable TV operators to re-focus their customer acquisition strategies, InStat-MDR cautions.
“Cable television growth in North America and Europe has dramatically flattened over the past two to three years, and this has been an unwelcome trend for many cable TV Multiple Systems Operators (MSOs) who have been counting on new subscribers to increase their revenues,” says In-Stat/MDR senior analyst Mike Paxton.
The biggest threat to long term growth of cable TV growth is coming from DTH satellite services, the report highlights, apart from the regional economic recessions. However, according to Paxton, “The good news for cable operators is that the digital revolution is bringing both new services to cable customers and new sources of revenue to cable operators.”
These digital cable offerings cover services such as: expanded channel lineups, video-on-demand, High Definition TV services, and high-speed data services. A key challenge for cable operators is that the cost to upgrade cable plants in order to provide these digital transmissions is substantial. This high cost, in turn, has slowed the overall pace of digital upgrades and has limited digital cable TV service to a few of the wealthier countries in the world.
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.
