News Broadcasting
Asiasat 4 scheduled for early April launch
HONG KONG: AsiaSat 4, the fourth satellite of Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company (AsiaSat), has arrived in Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA aboard a chartered heavy lift cargo aircraft.
Preparation for launching AsiaSat 4 by the Atlas IIIB rocket has commenced. This new satellite is currently scheduled for an early April launch.
AsiaSat 4, a Boeing 601HP model, will be deployed at the orbital location of 122 degrees east longitude, to replace AsiaSat 1. The new satellite is designed to provide advanced satellite services such as DTH television broadcasting, VSAT networks for business, rural telephony, broadband and IP solutions.
In a press statement, Asiasat CEO Peter Jackson was quoted as saying: “AsiaSat 4 will be the largest member of AsiaSat’s satellite fleet. Its unique and high performance C-band coverage will complement and provide redundancy for our two existing satellites, AsiaSat 2 and AsiaSat 3S. It will further expand our satellite capacity over the Asia Pacific region and enable our customers to enjoy unbeatable back up and greater flexibility for regional coverage.”
“AsiaSat 4’s high power Ku-band beams customised for Australia, East Asia and Hong Kong would be the ideal platform for delivering Direct-to-Home (DTH) and broadband solutions to these regions,” Jackson adds.
Carrying 28 C-band and 20 Ku-band transponders with a 15-year design life, AsiaSat 4’s pan Asian C-band footprint will cover more than 40 countries and regions from Auckland to Tehran.
The Ku-band coverage will consist of two high-power focused beams for East Asia and Australia, as well as a new BSS (Broadcast Satellite Service) Hong Kong payload for DTH services in Hong Kong and the adjacent South China region.
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.
