News Broadcasting
CCTV honours AsiaPac broadcasters with ‘ABU prizes awards’
MUMBAI: The annual Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) prizes awards ceremony, hosted by China Central Television (CCTV-China) has presented awards to broadcasters in the Asia-Pacific region in recognition of programming and broadcast engineering excellence.
The awards were presented by , Radio Film and Television of the People’s Republic of China vice-minister state administration Tian Jin, ABU president Genichi Hashimoto, CCTV president Zhao Huayong, China National Radio president Yang Bo, China Radio international president Wang Gengnian and CCTV vice-president Hu En.
211 entries were received for the annual award’s radio and TV categories. There were 147 entries for the TV categories, and 64 for radio.
TV categories included drama, entertainment, children, youth, news, documentary, and sports. Additionally, a special jury prize was also kept for programmes targeting broadcasters from less developed countries which showed creativity despite the limited resources available.
Categories for radio were drama, infotainment, children and youth, news, documentary, external broadcasts, and the special jury prize.
“We are most delighted with the quality of entries this year. The interest in the radio programme category has increased over the past year and in particular, there was serious competition for the TV documentary category,” said ABU director of programmes Tatsuya Nakamura.
ABU Prize for sports programmes chairperson Remesh Kumar added, “It was nice to see a whole range of broadcasters and producers from a variety of nationalities submitting their work. There was also a spectrum of presentations relating to sports from live productions, to studio presentations to documentaries.”
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.
