News Broadcasting
Actress Laura Linney to guest star on ‘Frasier’
MUMBAI: Academy Award nominated actress Laura Linney You Can count On Me has signed a deal with Paramount for its sitcom Frasier. In India the show airs on Star World.
Linney will appear in a four episode arc as a potential love interest for Dr. Frasier Crane played by Kelsey Grammer. The first episode in which Linney appears is called Match Game. It will air in the US on NBC on 23 March.
Paramount issued a release saying that Linney portrays Charlotte, a fraudulent matchmaker, whose attempt to set up Frasier with sophisticated women proves unsuccessful. When Frasier exposes her as an incompetent matchmaker, the two discover that they may be the perfect match.
Linney is the latest in an ongoing string of loves for the ever-hopeful title character. Over the course of 11 seasons, Frasier has been romantically linked to innumerable suitors, portrayed by film stars like Bridgette Wilson Sampras, Jean Smart and Jeanne Tripplehorn.
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.
