News Broadcasting
FT, London picks up 13.8% stake in Business Standard
NEW DELHI: Financial Times (FT) of London will be picking up 13. 8 per cent stake in Business Standard Ltd (BSL), a subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd, which publishes Business Standard newspaper. The UK media company will invest Rs 141 million in BS.
The London Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange-listed Pearson owns the FT Group. Editor and CEO of BS, TN Ninan confirmed the move to indiantelevision.com stating, “The initial agreement has been just signed.”
Though Ninan did not specify the amount of investment that would be made in BSL by the foreign partner, he did admit that the investment would be made “directly by FT or an affiliate”.
“Subsequent agreements and other details are still to be worked out,” Ninan added.
BS is the second newspaper to have said that it has finalized foreign investment after the investment norms were liberalised last year by the government. Recently, Hindustan Times had announced that it was tying up with Hendersen Global for bringing in 20 per cent of foreign investment in a new company called HT Media. It envisages activity in radio, dissemination of news and information, television, Internet, video films, magazines and books, besides newspapers soon.
The others who have evinced interest in either setting up shop in India or tying up with an India media company, include US business magazine BusinessWeek, Par Golf from Exposure Media and Intelligent Computing Chip from TBW Publishing. All of them are interested in starting an Indian edition through licence agreements with the parent companies.
It is not known whether a tie-up with FT would be extended to renewed TV forays or in other specialty magazine segment by BS. But it is expected that after having tied up with Ananda Bazaar Patrika group for Star News venture, Star/News Corp may make an entry into print medium too.
Pearson is an international media company with market-leading businesses in education, business information and consumer publishing. The FT Group is the most international source of business and political news and analysis.
Pearson is listed on the London (PSON) and New York (PSO) Stock Exchanges. In 2002 the company had sales of $6,955 million and operating profits of $794 million.
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.
