News Broadcasting
As drums of war get louder, Pakistan blacks out Indian channels
As war rhetoric beams ever louder, Pakistan on Saturday issued orders to all cable TV operators in the country to stop relaying broadcasts of Indian satellite television channels.
This is the second time in the last three months that orders to black out Indian TV channels have been issued. However, the last time round mainly news channels were included in the ambit of the ban. Following the 11 September WTC attack the All-Pakistan Cable Operators’ Association had imposed a countrywide ban on airing five Indian channels “propagating against Islam and Pakistan.”
The channels, which were blacked out then were Zee News, Star News, Star Plus, Jain TV and all Doordarshan channels.
Chief of the Pakistan Telecom Authority Maj Gen Shabzada Alam Malik has warned that cable operators defying the ban would be penalised and their licences cancelled.
The Indian government, meanwhile, said it is closely monitoring the contents of Pakistan’s state-owned television – Pakistan Television – on account of its anti-India propaganda. However, information & broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj said no decision had yet been taken on banning the channel.
Condemning the false propaganda being carried out by the channel, the minister said that any decision would be taken only after consultation with ministry of external affairs. Any decision to ban a foreign channel has to be ratified by a committee of secretaries, Swaraj has been quoted as saying. PTV was banned at the time of war in Kargil.
Though official orders have not gone out, there are reports of a similar ban on PTV in some parts of India. District authorities in Meerut on Thursday night banned telecast of PTV channel through cable operators till January 25, 2002, to check “anti-national publicity”.
Meanwhile, the Central Monitoring Service, under the I&B Ministry, has stepped up the content monitoring exercise of different television and radio channels, especially after the beginning of the war in Afghanistan, ministry officials were quoted as saying.
CMS is involved in monitoring of content in Indian and foreign media on a regular basis and its reports are sent to several ministries including home, defence, external affairs and I&B.
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.
