News Broadcasting
BBC World News hosts 16th edition of Annual Golf Connect
MUMBAI: BBC World News’ 16th annual Golf Connect brought around 100 top corporate golfers in India under one roof. The event took place on 1 February at the ITC Classic Golf and Country Club in Gurgaon, attended by legendary cricketer Kapil Dev and professional Indian Golfer Tvesa Malik.
The event attracted over 100 of India’s top corporate golfers highlighting the sought after nature of the occasion and showcasing the BBC’s commitment to engaging corporate leaders across India.
The special guest of the event was Indian cricketer Kapil Dev. Dev is regarded as one of the sport's best all-rounders and as one of the greatest captains in the history of cricket, helping India win its first ever Cricket World Cup in 1983. He is also a professional golfer and represented India in the 2018 Asia Pacific Seniors in Japan.
Since its launch in 2004, the BBC World News Golf Connect event has offered India’s corporate leaders the opportunity to demonstrate their skills on the fairway whilst building valuable relationships with colleagues from across their industries, with the event attracting C-suite leaders from top brands across the country.
Hosted by BBC World News, the day showcased the BBC’s substantial global offering across both the World News channel and online at BBC.com, demonstrating the BBC’s commitment to the Indian market, which now holds the biggest BBC news global audience, having grown from 30 to 50 million people in a year.
BBC World News and BBC.com, the BBC’s commercially funded international 24-hour English news platforms, are owned and operated by BBC Global News. BBC World News television is available in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, and over 465 million households and 3 million hotel rooms. The channel is also available on over 180 cruise ships, 53 airlines, including 13 distributing the channel live inflight.
BBC.com offers up-to-the-minute international news, in-depth analysis and features, including BBC Worklife, BBC Culture, BBC Future, BBC and BBC Reel, for PCs, tablets and mobile devices to more than 110 million unique browsers each month.
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.
