News Broadcasting
Ad campaign urges cable trade to pay service tax
MUMBAI: The directorate general of service tax and the local central excise office has issued an advertisement in all publications today, urging cable operators to pay the five per cent service tax in the interest of the nation and “for their own good”.
Meanwhile, business daily reports indicate that there is a strong probability that the Centre may increase service taxes from five to eight per cent in Budget 2003-4.
The department, in its ad, says that those who provide taxable services have to be mandatorily registered with the jurisdictional central excise department and pay the service tax on the amount realised for the services rendered.
The ad says that service tax is recoverable from the customers of the service providers – the TV viewers in this case. It claims that the tax procedure has been simplified to ensure that there is no harrassment to the service provider.
Cable operators can register by filing the simple ST-1 form which can be downloaded from the website www.cbec.gov.in. The tax has to be paid in authorised banks by the 25th day of the following month. Individual service providers, partnership firms, proprietorship firms can pay tax on quarterly basis by 25 January, April, July and October.
Half yearly returns can be filed by 25 April for the half year ending March and 25 October for the half year ending September.
It is important to note that the service tax is payable only on the amount received by the service provider for the services rendered.
BJP MP Kirit Somaiya had earlier demanded that the MSOs and the cable operators must disclose the details of the previous three years’ entertainment tax, service tax, income tax collected and paid by them. Somaiya has alleged that cable operators and MSOs don’t give receipts to consumers. He says less than 400 cable operators in Mumbai were registered with the service tax department which falls under the preview of the Excise department.
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.
