News Broadcasting
Aaj Tak claims good response to WCC contests
MUMBAI: With the Cricket World Cup over and the contests associated with it coming to an end, its time now for results- both in terms of winners as well as the response generated from the viewers.
Aaj Tak, the news channel has received a good response to the contests that it had run in association with Electrolux Kelvinator.
The contest period spanning 43 days received more than 1.5 million responses averaging 35226 responses per day, with the maximum for a day going up to 82797 responses, states an official release.
According to the release, 150 winners hailing from major towns and cities of India, will be given washing machines as per the contest rules. The north and west regions were the biggest response generators for the contest.
Figures prove that the response generated by Aaj Tak for its contests was as good as that initiated by an entertainment channel, which was covering the WCC tournament, adds the release. While the sports/entertainment channel garnered close to 2 million responses, Aaj Tak managed 1.5 million responses that too without having live coverage of the WCC tournament.
“Contrary to the belief that news channels would be affected because of the World Cup, Aaj Tak has been able to attract more viewers to the channel. In the past one month we have increased our reach by 4 million households and the channel share to 59 per cent from the earlier 55per cent ,” Aaj Tak CEO G Krishnan is quoted as saying in the release.
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.
