News Broadcasting
Allied Media appoints Saurabh Gupta as business head digital services
MUMBAI: In his new role as business head, digital media Saurabh will be responsible for providing holistic digital solutions for all clients of Percept Media and also only Digital direct clients. He would be taking care of India region, and integrate digital in the marcom solutions of all Percept Group clients.
With his experience of almost 10 years in the industry, he has worked with renowned companies like Reliance Entertainment Digital and Wipro Technologies. He played a major role in Zapak Digital as national sales head and has serviced brands like PepsiCo (Change the Game Campaign and Pepsi T20 Football), Mountain Dew (Dew Extreme Tours, Hrithik launch and MTV Roadies Integration), Michelin Tires (Malaysia Pilot Experience, Lemans), Airtel (F1 Online Activity) and many more
He is a professional with qualitative experience in brand building, business development, sales, process implementation, client servicing and team management.
Allied Media CEO Shripad Kulkarni said, “It’s not about digital marketing but a fresh way of looking at marketing to digital savvy customers of our clients. So, we will have two digital teams – a digital strategy team which is a part of the core strategy team of Percept Media and a business team”.
On the digital strategy, business head – digital Saurabh Gupta added, “Digital media behaves in a very different form factors according to businesses and categories. But, most businesses are shortsighted and consider digital media as only a marcom instrument. We are here to change the way brands perceive digital as a medium and transform the entire marketing making it a catalyst to achieve business objective and transform the brand life stage. Our digital strategy blueprint will be: digital led business re-engineering customised for brands.”
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.
