News Broadcasting
Christina Aguilera to host MTV Asia Awards 2005
MUMBAI: Multiple Grammy Award-winning artist, Christina Aguilera, will be making her debut appearance in Asia as a host for the 2005 MTV Asia Awards, which are to be held in Bangkok on 3 February, 2005.
Aguilera will join performers Maroon 5 and Namie Amuro, on stage to mesmerise the crowd with her star prowess. More artists and celebrities will be announced in the weeks leading up to the event.
Aguilera shot to fame with her self-titled album Genie in a Bottle in 1999. The album stayed on top of the charts for over five weeks and made sales of over 16 million copies. With a string of chart toppers under her belt, Aguilera earned numerous accolades including a Grammy award from Best New Artist.
The following year, Aguilera earned her second Grammy for her Spanish language album Mi Reflejo.
Declared as Favourite Female Artist at the 2004 MTV Asia Awards by young people across Asia, Aguilera ‘s appetite in trying new kinds of music has affirmed her as one of the most popular female singers of her time. Constantly pushing the envelope, she co-wrote and co-produced her latest album Stripped, which has already sold over 10 million albums worldwide.
The MTV Asia Awards is the only pan-regional event of its kind in Asia that brings together the largest gathering of international and local talent ever seen in the region. Filmed before a live audience of over 7000 music lovers, the event will be broadcast to over 180 million homes across the region. Viewers can cast their votes for their favourites from 15 November to 15 January 2005 through various ways including voting on the official website at www.mtvasiaawards.com and via short message service (SMS) for vote collation.
The official sponsors for the MTV Asia Award 2005 are Toyota Motor Corporation, HP and Samsung. Local sponsors include Sinyal Kuat Indosat in Indonesia, 5425 in Korea, DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd in Malaysia, Addict Mobile in the Philippines, StarHub in Singapore and Heineken in Thailand. The awards are also supported by the Tourism Authority of Thailand
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.
