News Broadcasting
CNN-IBN to telecast ‘Punjab’s Forgotten Women’ on weekend
NEW DELHI: CNN-IBN is set to telecast a special woman-centric show during the weekend that will discuss the plight of women in Punjab. Titled Punjab‘s Forgotten Women, the show will feature the lives of Punjab‘s women who exisit under religious rituals and social obligations dictated by family, clan and caste.
Says IBN18 Network editor-in-chief Rajdeep Sardesai, “Through this initiative, we aim to create awareness about the problems faced by these women and hope to bring about a change in their lives.”
The 30 minute show uncovers the unseen side of the misery suffered by women in Punjab. The show will meet widows suffering with HIV/Aids with an aim to find out the problems that such women face after the death of the only earning member of the family.
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: 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.
