News Broadcasting
China worried about TV stars aping westerners
MUMBAI: Chinese government has asked the country’s television presenters to stop dyeing their hair, exposing too much flesh and using English words. The government’s new policy also bans imports of overseas crime shows.
After the recent moves to crack down on the internet and computer games, the state administration of radio, film and TV has issued the new broadcasting regulations. They claim that the new restrictions will save juveniles from unhealthy influences.
Mainland Chinese TV channels have been distancing themselves from their counterparts’ (read Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong) content policy that allowed wild, and often sexually explicit shows.
But in recent years, broadcasters who cater to the rising urban middle-classes in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou are forced to stretch their content beyond the regulatory boundaries to produce livelier programmes to gain more advertising revenues.
The government and a section of the public are also irked by the fact that some of the popular TV presenters are not well versed in traditional languages like Mandarin and Chinese.
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.
