News Broadcasting
BBC World Service plans tribute for Tsunami affected regions
MUMBAI: Six months have passed since the natural disaster Tsunami affected Indonesia, The Maldives, Sri Lanka and Somalia. The BBC World Service is launching The Tsunami Audio Memorial, a project aimed at creating an audio tribute to the region
The BBC is asking people who live in the Southern Asian region which was affected by the Tsunami, visited it or have family there, to contact them via a dedicated phone line and email address and send in their audio recordings.
Over the next six months, BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Asian Network will be gathering sounds and stories that evoke the colour, vibrancy and diversity of the region, as well as the events of 26 December 2004 and their aftermath.
These will be crafted into a series of programmes to be broadcast on the networks at the end of the year. The BBC is hoping that the resulting audio database will find a home and be accessible to anyone as a living memorial. The BBC states that the inspiration for the project comes from the Sonic Memorial Project in the US.
After the 9/11 attacks four years ago National Public Radio had asked American listeners to contribute their sounds and stories about the World Trade Center.
The areas affected by the Tsunami are rich in sound. Whether the evocations are of Indonesian fishermen bringing in their early morning catch, conch shells being blown at dawn or the cacophony of a traffic-filled street in Thailand – or stories and sounds related to the tsunami itself, such as mobile phone messages, holiday videos or the noise of reconstruction – the aim of the BBC’s Tsunami Audio Memorial project is to commemorate the region and its people.
BBC World Service editor world programmes Maria Balinska says, “This is a very exciting and ambitious project. By reaching out to people all over the world, we hope to create a fitting tribute to those affected by the tsunami tragedy.”
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.
