News Broadcasting
BBC Hindi’s radio documentary wins ABU award
MUMBAI: BBC Hindi has won an award at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU).
Its radio documentary – Rising Mercury, Deepening Crisis – won the Best Radio Documentary Award at the 44th ABU General Assembly in Tehran, Iran, on 3 November.
It was produced by BBC Hindi Radio editor Shivkant Sharma and presented by Mukesh Sharma. Shivkant Sharma said, “The objective of Rising Mercury, Deepening Crisis was to report how climate change is impacting lives of millions of people in north India, how economic development and changing lifestyle are speeding up climate change and what people could do individually and collectively to tackle climate change.
“We had a very encouraging feedback from our audience, and now the ABU Award proves that we have been quite successful in our mission.”
India accounts for just 4.5 per cent of the global emission of green-house gases but the picture is likely to change dramatically within a generation. India’s share of global emission is likely to soar as urbanisation accelerates, fuelled by the rapidly growing economy.
In Rising Mercury, Deepening Crisis, BBC Hindi examines the effect of human activity on climate change, and the affect of climate change on the lives of millions of people in India. The documentary takes listeners to places where the impact of climate change is already visible and looks at the evidence on the ground.
Starting in a busy street of Kanpur, one of the most polluted cities of India, the programme moves on to Gangotri, the largest glacier in the Himalayas, and Sunderbans, the largest mangroves in the world, tracing the natural path of the carbon-cycle.
Along with explaining and highlighting the imminent and visible dangers of climate change, the BBC Hindi documentary examines the practical steps that governments and individuals can take to address the issue.
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: 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.
