News Broadcasting
‘Bhagat Singh’ pushes Zee ratings into top 50
MUMBAI: Steady would be the best way to describe it. The inaugural film of Zee TV’s blockbuster block may not have set the TRPs on fire, but The Legend of Bhagat Singh did make it to the top 50 in the ratings just out.
According to research agency TAM, all-India results for the 4+ TG gave Bhagat Singh 38th position on the ratings with a TVR of 3.19 as also the 59th position with a TVR of 2.92. The only other Zee shows that made it to the top 100 are Playwin Lucky 3 which had a TVR of 2.53 and Playwin Super Lotto with a TVR of 2.46.
Zee has only be making sporadic entries in the top 100 shows, with the channel failing to make an entry into last week’s ratings at all. The last time it made a splash in the ratings was on 14 August, when Gadar managed a TVR of 5.05 to slide in at 17 on the ratings charts.
A 3.19 rating might seems rather disappointing considering the intense media interest that went into Zee’s latest strategy to take it back into the reckoning in the Hindi entertainment channel stakes. Add the fact that Rs 330 million is the reported acquisition cost for the first 16 movies that Zee has bought. However, two media buyers that indiantelevision.com spoke took a different line on the matter.
According to Ravi Kiran, GM, Starcom Worldwide, a 3.19 TVR for the first week was not too far off the 4 or thereabouts that he he was expecting. Asked to offer a time frame within which he would make a judgment on whether this strategy was working as pulling in viewers to sample the other fare that Zee had on offer, Kiran said such assessments could only be made in the sixth or seventh week.
Harsha Joshi, senior director, Madison Communications, also voiced similar sentiments saying that the more popular films like Humraaz (the second of Thursday Premiere series) and Mujse Dosti Karoge would probably bring in higher ratings. According to Joshi, once the concept had sunk in, an average rating of at least 7 could be deemed as satisfactory.
Satisfactory maybe, but way off what would be required to shake up the soap queens that are ruling the ratings charts at present.
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.
