News Broadcasting
Chintamani Rao to replace Sunil Lulla as Times Now CEO
MUMBAI: Chintamani Rao has been appointed CEO of Times Global Broadcasting – Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd’s broadcast arm that owns and operates English news channel Times Now.
Rao replaces Sunil Lulla, who has resigned as of Thursday and is joining production house and soon to be broadcaster Miditech.
When contacted, Rao would only say, “I will reveal my plans within the next four weeks.”
Times Group officials were unavailable for comment at the time of filing this report.
It was last Friday that it was announced that Rao had resigned from the post of CEO of Rajat Sharma’s Independent News Service (INS), which owns and operates Hindi news channel India TV. A media industry veteran with over 30 years in the business, Rao joined India TV in September 2005 from Universal McCann Integrated Communications, where he was president.
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.
