News Broadcasting
CNBC Pakistan to launch early next year: report
MUMBAI: CNBC is gearing up to set up base in Pakistan early next year by launching CNBC Pakistan, which will be the country’s first international business channel. UAE’s minister of higher education and scientific research and CNBC Pakistan chairman Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan announced that the channel will launch in the first quarter of 2005.
Al Nahayan was quoted in the Dubai-based Khaleej Times as saying that broadcasting from state-of-the-art studios and production facilities in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore, the channel would transmit live programmes in both Urdu and English from Pakistan’s perspective 24×7.
He also said that new standards of accurate and credible TV journalism would be set via this channel and that they were looking at hiring new talent to operate the new television station.
CNBC Pakistan president Zafar Siddiqui was also quoted in the report as saying that the channel would be a value addition to the Pakistani media landscape and would utilise the global resources of the CNBC network to deliver a continuous flow of relevant, engaging news and information from all of the Pakistani markets and from global business centres.
CNBC Pakistan is owned by VNTV – a Pakistani company – and has access to the CNBC global network and the resources of Dow Jones.
According to the KT report, VNTV, which is a public limited company with a paid-up capital of $14 million, will offer its shares to the general public for subscription by the end of year 2005. A total of four slots – two each at Pas-2 and Pak-Sat have been booked to air the transmission for the viewers across the globe.
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.
