News Broadcasting
News18 India launches campaign; asserts channel’s leadership
MUMBAI: News18 India, Network18’s general Hindi news channel, recently launched a campaign with a humorous and quirky film to drive home its leadership position in the crucial primetime band in the highly competitive Hindi TV news segment.
Conceptualised by RK Swamy BBDO and directed by Rajesh Saathi, the film opens in a police interrogation room. A witness is being questioned. A seemingly stern cop, accompanied by two constables, asks the man about his whereabouts from 6 to 11 PM in the evening. Scared of the cops, the protagonist says that he was at home watching News18 India. When the cops don’t believe him, he re-iterates that he really was watching the channel. As the situation evolves a superior officer chips in to state that the entire nation watches News18India at that time and hence the person being quizzed is indeed stating the truth.
Commenting on the campaign, Rahul Kansal, Group Brand Advisor, Network18 said, “Over the past couple of years, there has been a surfeit of messages from media brands, claiming leadership. The format of the communication tends to be quite similar: screaming headlines, graphs showing research data etc. Over time, this communication seems to be working less and less, especially amongst over-communicated-to media and marketing professionals. We decided to present News18 India’s leadership story in a cut-through way, using humour and entertainment, instead of brute hard-sell. It seems to have worked well.”
The channel’s current campaign has an on-ground leg as well with extensive branding across 25 agencies in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore targeting advertisers and media planners with the unambiguous message that clearly positions News18 India as India’s Number one Hindi news channel.
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: 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.
