News Broadcasting
7th Indian News Television Summit: Innovation for higher ad revenue
MUMBAI: ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’ is an age old adage. Operating in a cash crunch environment, this seems to be just what Indian news broadcasters will have to do if they want to continue to beam into homes.
The Indian TV news business has been grappling with several issues. Close to 400 channels account for a small per cent of ad spends. High carriage fees and cutthroat competition for the ad rupee have made the going really tough for those in the news business.
With this as the backdrop, comes leading Indian media service Indiantelevision.com’s Seventh News Television Summit entitled ‘Monetisation in Transformational Times” on 28 October at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. It seeks to address how those in the news TV ecosystem can develop more robust or new business models, including new revenue streams such as digital online video, syndication, off the air ground activities, advertiser driven programming solutions, among many others.
The highlights of the half day premier news television industry confab are a keynote by News Broadcasters Association president and India TV chairman and editor in chief Rajat Sharma followed by a discussion on ‘Meeting the challenge for today’s TV news networks, a one-on-one with ITV Network MD Kartikeya Sharma and then a keynote from leading media agency Group M south Asia CEO CVL Srinivas. .
The session ‘Content monetisation through conventional and digital platforms of news channel’ will see a reveling discussion on how business heads are meeting the challenge of low ad rates and near zero subscription revenue with rising cost through alternative options such as syndication of news, events, digital etc. Included in this session are NDTV group CEO Vikram Chandra, TV Today Network CEO Ashish Bagga, IBN18 Network CEO Avinash Kaul, Doordarshan ADG News Mayank Agarwal and Focus News Network group CEO Neeraj Sanan.
‘Innovation in news selling’ will explore novel ideas for media agencies and brands to increase their ROI from their investments on news networks and what innovative methods can be drawn for both to achieve a win-win business model. Opening the session is Srinivas’ keynote followed by a discussion with IPG Mediabrands India CEO Shashi Sinha, CNN-IBN and IBN7 national revenue head Vishal Bhatnagar, India TV senior VP and country head – ad sales Sudipto Chowdhuri and Zee Sangam national sales head Harsha Vardhan Dwivedi. The sessions will be moderated by Provocateur Advisory principal Paritosh Joshi.
Editors of networks will discuss how far they will go to allow money to drive content in the session titled ‘Monetisation for editorial independence’. ITV Network editor in chief Deepak Chaurasia, former India TV editorial director and veteran journalist QW Naqvi, Mi Marathi consultant Nikhil Wagle and moderator Aaj Tak and Headlines Today editor at large Rahul Kanwal will take the stage. In a separate discussion, Amagi co-founder KA Srinivasan will discuss how it can offer solutions to advertisers and news networks to further ad revenue.
Says Indiantelevision.com founder, CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari: “So far the news television industry has not been able to harness substantial subscription revenues, even as carriage fees look set to rise with digitisation being delayed. Hence, it needs to look for solutions to hike revenues from the advertising inventory – the threat of the reduction of this has been staved off at least for now – they have, apart from working closely with advertisers and agencies to offer solutions that opens up the revenue pipeline for them further. The challenge is to increase their yields while increasing the ROI for advertisers. I believe the seventh news television summit will help give both advertisers and news channels some pointers as to how they could achieve this jointly.”
The presented by sponsor for the event is Jia News, silver partners are Akamai, India News, NewsX, Sakshi TV, TV9, growth partner is SureWaves, Amagi is lanyard partner, support partners are CNBC Awaaz and CNBC TV18, online media partners are radioandmusic.com and tellychakkar.com. The event is executed by ITV 2.0 Productions.
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.
