News Broadcasting
BBC News Online reports global support for Nisha Sharma
NEW DELHI: It looks as if Nisha Sharma is getting international support for her stand on dowry and BBC News Online has played a role in it.
The BBC News Online has reported massive international interest and support for Nisha Sharma over her stand against dowry. According a press release, more than 170,000 people logged on to the BBC’s award winning news site (bbcnews.com) in just two days to read it’s reports about Nisha’s reaction to her fiance’s greedy dowry demands.
In a special poll set up on the site, 96 per cent of the 10,000 voters supported her decision to call the police. The BBC also reports that men have been writing in from around the region including a 23-year-old man from Kabul, Afghanistan. He said he was moved by Nisha Sharma’s courage and wished to marry her.
The release adds that this kind of a phenomenal response is possible only because BBC’s award winning News Online service is the world’s most popular new site and is read by millions of people across the world every day.
The editor of BBC’s online service at the BBC South Asia Bureau in Delhi, Sanjoy Majumder, was quoted as saying: “The response to the Nisha Sharma story is an example of how her situation has touched people worldwide. Our dedicated South Asia page is part of our effort to extend coverage of the region online and bring a diverse range of stories to a vast international audience.”
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.
