News Broadcasting
Anti-CAS camp in BJP meets Advani; I&B seeks law ministry advice
NEW DELHI: The chorus against conditional access system (CAS) has reached the office of deputy prime minister LK Advani. On the pro-CAS side, the information and broadcasting ministry has reportedly sought the advice of the law ministry on whether “errant” pay channels can be reined in through some legislative measures in case they fail to declare their individual pricing for a post-CAS regime.
According to a senior government official, nothing concrete on CAS can be said at the moment and the government is still hoping that broadcasters would fall in line and declare the prices of the pay channels before 14 July.
Though the government is said to be studying various options, it is becoming increasingly clear that rationing or regulating the quantum of ads carried by pay channels through a legislation may prove a tricky option.
The government official also said that at this juncture government intervention is not foreseen if the broadcasters want to have variable pricing through dual illumination or some other such mechanism.
“In a way variable pricing already exists as certain sections of Delhi, especially the far flung places, pay a lower monthly cable bill than in upmarket areas like South Delhi,” the official said.
But the broadcasting lobby is also not giving up. Today additional secretary in the information and broadcasting ministry Vijay Singh had Discovery India country head Deepak Shourie and ESPN India’s outgoing country head Manu Sawhney paying him a visit.
However, Shourie said they came to “discuss other things” than CAS with the bureaucrat.
Meanwhile, former chief minister of Delhi and a senior Bharatiya Janata Party member Madan Lal Khurana, along with Pramod Mahajan and others, is understood to have called on Advani to request him to see that implementation of CAS is deferred, at least in Delhi.
Though details of the meeting were not known till the time of writing this report, it is expected that Khurana and company petitioned for the delaying of CAS, particularly with state elections scheduled to be held in five states, including Delhi, by October-November.
Khurana’s stand is that CAS smells as foul as rotten onions. According to political folklore, in the last elections held in Delhi, the BJP lost power to the Congress because there was a severe shortage of onions and the public sentiment is said to have gone against the then ruling party.
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.
