News Broadcasting
3 to distribute Zone Reality’s mobile TV service in the UK
MUMBAI: Zone Mobile, the new mobile division of Zonemedia (formerly known as Zone Vision Networks) has appointed UK mobile media company 3 to distribute Zone Reality’s Mobile TV service.
Zonemedia will provide a supply of regularly refreshed, looped programming which can be accessed by 3 customers. The high-impact segments are being specially edited for mobile viewing and are created from the best of Zone Reality’s hit shows including Ouch! That Had to Hurt, Moronic 21st Century Idiots, Crash Bang and Beyond Bizarre.
Via distribution on 3, Zone Reality programmes will be available to 3’s 3.75 million customers through single channel sales where customers pay for each channel that they watch, or in a bundled package with a number of other TV channels.
Zone Mobile new media officer Tanya Gugenheim says, “3 are at a significant moment in the history of communications and media. They have created a different type of business by defining a new category which fuses together information, communication and entertainment into a single mobile device. We are really excited to be working with them and getting our innovative and in-demand Zone Reality material out to as wide an audience as possible.”
3 marketing director Graham Oxby says, “We are excited about all of the new developments in the mobile content arena and see the product being offered by Zone Reality as new and appealing for our 3.75 million customers.”
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.
