News Broadcasting
Aaj Tak claims exclusive coverage of major crime stories
MUMBAI: With a plethora of news channels dawning the indian television, competition is bound to scale new heights.
Aaj Tak claims it’s exclusive coverage on the Surendra Shetty case and Madhumita murder case has taken it way ahead of the other news channels in the country.
An official release states that Aaj Tak was the only channel that aired the taped conversation between Surendra Shetty and the underworld, Surendra Shetty and Pankaj Agarwal (Praful Sarees) and Pankaj Agarwal and the underworld, thus clearly establishing a nexus between Surendra Shetty and the underworld, and demonstrating how Pankaj Agarwal was subjected to arm-twisting through the underworld. These tapes were played exclusive on Aaj Tak on 19 May starting 7:00 am, adds the release.
The channel which was the first to conduct and air an interview with Pankaj Agarwal, also managed a breakthrough in the Madhumita Shukla murder case. The channel was able to lay its hands on the cell-phone records of Madhumita which clearly showed that Amar Mani Tripathi had made 22 calls on her phone the day she was murdered. This clearly negates all claims by Amar Mani that he has not been in touch with Madhumita in the last 3 years, the release adds.
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.
