News Broadcasting
APTN offers Saddam Hussein exclusive to Indian news channels
MUMBAI: Indian news television channels wanting to give their viewers a peek at whom the US calls the monster from Baghdad can do so now. Courtesy Associated Press Television News (APTN), the international video arm of the Associated Press.
APTN is offering the telecast rights to anyone wanting to air the recent interview of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by former British politician Tony Benn in Baghdad. The news agency has the international exclusive distribution rights of the interview.
An APTN spokesperson has asked broadcasters who want to use the footage to contact APTN’s library or aptn_library@ap.org.
APTN distributed the interview with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader’s first interview since the 1991 Gulf War, at 5 pm – 5:40 pm GMT (repeated at 7:00 pm – 7:40 pm GMT) on Tuesday, 4 February 2003. In the UK, Channel 4 aired Tony Benn’s interviews with Hussein from 7 pm (GMT) onwards on 4 February 2003.
The network aired around 25 minutes of the hour-long interview during Channel 4 News which was anchored by Jon Snow.
It is understood that BBC was originally planning to buy the interview for broadcast on BBC Two, however talks with the Arab Television Network, the company which owns the rights to the piece, fell through after the corporation refused to pay more than the bare production costs.
Channel 4 refused to confirm how much it had paid for the interview — the first the dictator has given to a Westerner in 12 years — but sources pointed towards a five-figure sum.
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.
