News Broadcasting
CNN to report on Asia’s pollution crisis
MUMBAI: CNN correspondents will report from across Asia on the most polluted cities in a half-hour focus on the continent’s environmental crises and the threats they pose to the rest of the world in Ill Wind: Asia’s Pollution Crisis. The special airs on 4 June at 4 30 pm and 11 30 pm.
Anchored by Anjali Rao from Hong Kong, Stan Grant, Jill Dougherty, Ram Ramgopal, Atika Shubert and Kristie Lu Stout analyse both the causes and effects of pollution in reports from India, China, Hong Kong, Japan and the US.
Ramgopal reports from New Delhi which, despite having won praise for converting its public transport fleet to less polluting natural gas, is now under assault from a two wheeled traffic boom.
The journey continues towards the west coast of the United States where Kristie Lu Stout reveals how pollutants from Asia are beginning to be detected in the air and water.
In a sign of how things may improve, Tokyo bureau chief Atika Shubert reports from Kawasaki, a city that was once a “pollution nightmare” that has transformed itself into an “eco-town”. The city’s environmental model aims to strike a rare balance between the needs of development and growth while greatly reducing pollution.
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.
