News Broadcasting
Chandra’s Essel confident of winning airports bid
MUMBAI / NEW DELHI: Subhash Chandra’s Essel Group expressed confidence in winning the bid for the modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai Airports after it, along with five rival consortia, submitted bids to the civil aviation ministry minutes before the deadline today.
Among the others left in the fray from the original shortlisted ones were the Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Energy and the South India-based GVK and GMR consortia.
Two consortia that pulled out of the bidding process citing restrictive government conditions were the Bharti-Changi Singapore Airport consortium and the L&T-Hochtief Airport GmbH team.
“Now that people have withdrawn the uncertainties are over and we are very confident of winning the bid,” Essel Group senior V-P Ashish Kaul told indiantelevision.com.
Essel has teamed up with TAV group of Europe to bid for the modernisation of airports in Delhi and Mumbai under the name PanIndia Paryatan-Tav combine.
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.
