News Broadcasting
50 mn TV shows, two billion songs sold on iTunes
MUMBAI: Computer major Apple has announced that more than two billion songs, 50 million television episodes and over 1.3 million feature-length films have been purchased and downloaded from its online iTunes Store
Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs says, “iTunes has crossed another major milestone by selling over two billion songs—with over a billion of them sold in the last year alone—making it by far the world’s most popular music store. By selling 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies to date, iTunes is already the largest online video store in the world as well.”
The iTunes Store now features over four million songs, 250 feature films, 350 television shows and over 100,000 podcasts. iTunes has just added more than 100 movies from Paramount Pictures priced at $9.99. They include School of Rock, The Italian Job, Mean Girls and Zoolander.
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.
