News Broadcasting
Aaj Tak relaunches ‘Seedhi Baat’
MUMBAI: TV Today Network has relaunched its big-ticket Hindi show Seedhi Baat. The show will be hosted by Sweta Singh, news anchor and executive editor of special programming at Aaj Tak.
The first episode of the show, which will air at 8 pm on 24 March, will feature BJP president Amit Shah as the guest.
TV Today Network managing editor Supriya Prasad said, “Seedhi Baat aims to have blunt straight talk with various leaders of the industry. It embodies a tough-as-nails approach to interviews. One-on-one hard-hitting conversations with powerful leaders, celebrities, tycoons and so forth as opposed to noisy debates.”
The guests in Seedhi Baat will be from across a variety of sectors – UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia to name a few from politics and Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan from Bollywood while Virat Kohli and Hardik Pandya from the world of sports. The channel intends to approach prime minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi.
“Sweta is one of our most experienced journalists. She has tremendous exposure to news coverage. She has interviewed politicians, cricketers, international leaders, actors. But above all, her style of interviewing is direct without being fierce. She asks straight questions but does not shout down her guests,” added Prasad.
The promotions of the show will run all through the year. The network will also have a driver program running up to the 2019 elections. Out of home campaigns will run in Delhi and major cities in Uttar Pradesh as well as the old mix of outdoor, TV, radio, print and social media.
Speaking on the opportunity, Singh said, “I will be direct, tough and assertive. But I don’t believe in cutting my guest mid sentence. Seedhi Baat is a huge brand and I will put in all efforts to uphold the dignity, neutrality and credibility of the show.”
She believes that the show will deliver what the audiences are looking for. “The audiences want to hold power to account. They want honest answers. They want to see the reality, the truth. Seedhi Baatpromises to deliver all of that. It’s assertive but not noisy. The show has a proud history. It has had leaders like Narendra Modi facing tough questions. It featured superstars of the stature of Salman Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. Our Seedhi Baat with them is still etched in public memory,” she said.
Seedhi Baat is iconic for its earlier host Prabhu Chawla who won several awards for the show and for his style of asking direct and to-the-point questions. After his departure from the India Today group in 2010, the show was taken over by MJ Akbar.
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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.
