News Broadcasting
BBC Food channel launches in Scandinavia
LONDON: BBC Worldwide has announced that its channel BBC Food has launched across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. BBC Food is the first new BBC channel to launch in Europe since 1995 when BBC Prime took to the airwaves.
As the name suggests the content deals with cuisines and the different styles of chefs including the likes of Delia Smith and Gary Rhodes. Cooking shows that viewers will feast on include Delia’s How to Cook, Ready Steady Cook with Ainsley Harriott, Lesley Waters and Kevin Woodford, and Rick Stein’s seafood series Taste of the Sea. Keith Floyd will be ‘taking coals to Newcastle’ as he teaches the new audience some of their own culinary skills as he travels around the region with his travel cookery programme, Floyd’s Fjord Fiesta.
Commenting on the launch of the channel into the market, BBC Worldwide director of channels EMEIA, Wayne Dunsford, said: “The enormous popularity of cooking programmes and the rise of celebrity chefs in television entertainment has created a great appetite for this style of British programming in the region so we are sending in our best celebrity chefs to tickle their taste-buds.”
An official release informs that BBC Food will be available to Canal Digital satellite subscribers in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. BBC Food builds on the success of the entertainment channel, BBC Prime, which has broadcast in Europe since 1995 and now reaches over 12 million international subscribers.
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.
