News Broadcasting
Arianespace’s 2nd NSS flight lifts off tomorrow
Kourou: Undaunted by the failure of flight 157, Araianespace has announced that it has secured the go-ahead for the launch of its second flight for New Skies Satellites. This followed the launch readiness review held at the Spaceport in French Guiana.
The review cleared Flight 156’s Ariane 4 for the 17 December liftoff, and confirmed the readiness of its NSS-6 telecom satellite payload. Launch infrastructure at the Spaceport was declared ready for the mission, as were the downrange tracking stations.
This flight will be the second-to-last mission for the Ariane 4 launcher family. It is the 115th launch of an Ariane 4, and the 39th in the 44L version – which is equipped with four large liquid strap-on boosters for augmented thrust at liftoff and initial ascent.
The NSS-6 satellite was built by Lockheed Martin and carries a payload with high-performance Ku-band beams. To be positioned at 95 deg. East, the platform will reach markets from the Mediterranean Sea to Japan – covering Asia, Australia, Southern Africa and the Middle East.
Arianespace’s previous launch for the Netherlands-based New Skies Satellites was last April, when Flight 150 placed the NSS-7 satellite into a highly accurate geostationary transfer orbit.
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.
