News Broadcasting
China hopeful of offering mobile TV for 2008 Olympics
MUMBAI: China is preparing to launch mobile TV in time for the 2008 Olympics. Although 3G licences are yet to be distributed in China, this move that could serve as a big push for mobile television in Asia.
Media reports indicate that China will be using the digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) standard for rollout.
A report in Xinhua quoting China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (Sarft) said that transmission of TV signals to mobiles would be tested in the middle of next year.
The satellite system will be activated in the first half of 2008 so that the Olympic Games could be projected to millions of mobile users across the country.
China’s two biggest mobile telecom operators, China Mobile and China Unicom are expected to sign agreements at the end of the month with mobile phone makers to buy TV handsets soon.
China has more than 400 million mobile phone users and the number is increasing by 5 million a month, according to the Ministry of Information Technology.
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.
