News Broadcasting
Bombay high court gives India today TV a clean chit
New Delhi: If anyone thought that the TRP manipulation row has ended, the news is that it is far from over.
Last fortnight, the Bombay high court stayed an order passed by BARC disciplinary committee and directed BARC India not to take any coercive action against India Today group subject to a deposit of Rs 5 lakh with the court.
In the latest development, as per a court order the Bombay high court has set aside the BARC disciplinary committee order against India Today TV. It has ordered that the Rs 5 lakh deposited with the court registrar be returned to the India Today group in full.
A statement from the group said: “Over 45 years, we have painstakingly built on the principle of credible journalism. Story by story. Edition by edition. Platform by platform. We have created a deep legacy of credibility, excellence, trust and bipartisanship. We are widely recogised as the gold standard of journalism in the country. In a landscape marked by shrill polarities, we have only one political alignment: the Indian constitution. And, we follow it without fear or fervour.”
We tried reaching BARC for comments but no one was available to respond.
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.
