News Broadcasting
Channel 7 news director Arup Ghosh quits
MUMBAI:Arup Ghosh, news director of Channel 7, the news channel from the Jagran group, has put in his papers after a short stint there.
Contacted by Indiantelevision.com, Ghosh confirmed the move, saying, “I joined in December and, along with some other senior people, built up a team that is now fit to run a news channel. I think, it’s time for me to look at other ventures now.”
Ghosh, reportedly, put in his papers today citing personal reasons. His future course of action is not known yet, though there are talks of “some options” available with him.
Jagran TV director Siddhartha Gupta told Indiantelevision.com that the parting was “amicable.”
Later in the evening, an official statement hailed Ghosh’s “invaluable contributions as a founding member of Channel 7” and wished him “the very best” in his future ventures.
Broadcast industry sources indicated that after being instrumental in launching two news channels, Sahara Samay Rashtriya and Channel 7, Ghosh would find it difficult to get that type of challenges and satisfaction in existing news ventures.
Ghosh, a print medium journalist migrated to television towards the end of the last century when he joined NDTV. Towards the beginning of this decade, Ghosh, along with another NDTV staffer, Shireen, joined the Sahara group to spearhead its national news channel. Both Shireen and Ghosh quit Sahara last year.
Channel 7, where Ghosh joined in December last as its news director, went formally on air 2 April, promising different treatment to its programming tilted towards non-fiction and hopped on to a DTH platform at the same time to increase its reach, which is supplemented by the cable networks it is managing to ride.
The channel, which has been set up to cater to the vast Hindi-speaking audiences, has lined up several innovative shows like Giraftaar that do not have any anchor, but is a seamless series of crime stories.
The launch of Channel 7, managed by Jagran TV Pvt Ltd, marks the entry of Dainik Jagran, a dominant print medium player, into the TV broadcasting arena. The free-to-air Hindi satellite channel has also confident of securing a presence in 28 million households, across 300 cities in the first month of operations itself, which, incidentally, is today.
The news channel segment is once again witnessing churning as the turnover in various media
organisations is rising. A reason could be some of the big names of Indian television trying to strike out on their own. This includes former managing editor of NDTV, Rajdeep Sardesai, too, who has promised a news product that would be different.
The Rs. 5,500 million news television market is dominated by the present market leader Aaj Tak, which has managed to hang on to the numero uno position for several years, followed by two NDTV channels.
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.
