News Broadcasting
BBC claims excellent response to interactive Olympics feature
MUMBAI: BBC’s decision to provide interactive services in the UK for the Olympics has paid off.
As many as 8.96 million digital satellite viewers pressed the red button to use the BBC’s interactive Olympic services. This represents the highest reaching service to date and more than double the previous peak for Wimbledon 2004.
While 83 per cent of those who had pressed the red button used the service for more than three minutes, 61 per cent were still interacting 15 minutes into the service, and 51 per cent stayed over 25 minutes.
Figures show that 58 per cent of the available digital satellite (Sky) audience pressed red to interact. The BBC’s broadband Olympics service which included both live and highlights coverage attracted an estimated 2.8 million requests for at-home broadband streaming.
The site bbc.co.uk/olympics attracted 5.7 million unique users during the games. BBC Sport’s head of New Media, Sports News and Development Andrew Thompson said, “This was the first ever truly interactive Olympics. It is a model for multi-media working at the BBC in the future.
“The interactive services give our audiences exactly what they wanted across the web and interactive TV: extra choice about what events they watch, when and how they watched them.
“The figures we got are a tribute to the production and technical teams who worked so effectively together across all media to deliver a fantastic choice of compelling content.”
The BBC’s interactive Olympics service gave digital satellite and cable viewers the opportunity to choose from four streams of live coverage through the red button in addition to BBC One and BBC Two.
News Broadcasting
Book Cricket gets a digital century on News18 amid T20 fever
Nostalgic classroom game revamped in English, Hindi plus Telugu on web and app.
MUMBAI: When the T20 World Cup fever hits fever pitch, News18 decides to flip the script straight back to the classroom. The digital news platform has revived the timeless schoolyard favourite Book Cricket as an interactive online game, perfectly timed to ride the cricket wave gripping fans across the globe. The reimagined Book Cricket ditches textbooks for smartphones, blending old-school nostalgia with modern gameplay. Once a sneaky recess pastime played by flicking book pages to score runs, the digital version now offers seamless fun for anyone craving a quick cricket fix between overs.
Available in English, Hindi and Telugu (with more languages planned across News18’s network), the game sits within the platform’s fast-growing gaming portfolio of over 20 titles, all built in-house. It joins event-driven hits like ‘Kursi Catcher’ and ‘Result Rewind’ during the 2025 Bihar Assembly Elections, plus festive specials such as ‘Durga’s Astras’ for Durga Puja and ‘Mouse Modak’ for Ganesh Chaturthi.
News18 Digital CEO Mitul Sangani said, “Gaming is a key pillar of our engagement strategy. At News18, we uniquely combine our newsroom agility with immersive gaming experiences. By blending credible content with interactive formats, we are creating meaningful engagement in an era defined by shrinking attention spans and evolving consumption habits.”
Select titles have expanded beyond News18.com to CNBC-TV18.com and Firstpost.com, reflecting the network’s push to deepen user interaction across platforms. The Book Cricket game is live now at https://www.news18.com/games/book-cricket/.
In a tournament where every boundary counts, News18’s digital Book Cricket proves the simplest games can still deliver the biggest smiles no syllabus required, just pure cricket joy one page-flip at a time.
