News Broadcasting
BBC Worldwide, MEASAT sign agreement for BBC Prime in Asia
MUMBAI: BBC Worldwide and a unit of MEASAT Global Berhad, owner and operator of the MEASAT satellite network, announced an agreement for using MEASAT to broadcast BBC Worldwide’s international entertainment channel BBC Prime into Asia.
The channel is a specially developed version of BBC Worldwide’s international entertainment channel of the same name currently available in Europe, Middle East and Africa and will start broadcasting on 1 December, 2004. The announcement was made at the CASBAA convention in Hong Kong.
BBC Prime will bring the best of BBC entertainment to viewers in Asia, with a varied mix of comedy, drama, life style, talk shows, game shows, music and documentaries. Through the MEASAT-1 satellite, BBC Prime will be offered to TV platforms across the South East and East Asian regions. The channel will be transferred to the MEASAT-3 satellite after launch in mid-2005. The bandwidth has sufficient capacity to accommodate BBC Prime’s plans to provide subtitling for major markets.
BBC Worldwide EMEIA director of channels Wayne Dunsford said, “With MEASAT, we have found a strong and reliable partner to lay the foundation for the roll-out of BBC Prime into Asia and we look forward to a long and successful cooperation.”
MEASAT vice president sales and marketing Paul Brown-Kenyon said, “We are delighted to be able to support BBC Worldwide on this channel. MEASAT-1 provides an excellent distribution platform for BBC Prime across East and South East Asia. It also allows for seamless migration to MEASAT-3 in 2005, a satellite which will reach over 70 per cent of the world’s population through a single beam.”
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.
