News Broadcasting
Crime news channel in the offing from the Star stable
MUMBAI: Come 2005, and the Indian news genre will witness a dedicated crime news channel from the Star News pad.
With a tentative launch date of March-end 2005, this channel will focus on covering extensive crime as well as content to support the genre revolving around bravery, prevention of crime, re-enactment of the crime acts and more, say reliable industry sources.
Why a dedicated crime channel? This was attributed to the analysis of shows on news channels today, which revealed that the crime shows rated the best out of the whole gamut. Hence the strategic decision to take off on crime as a genre due to its overriding success across all news channels.
When contacted, Star News officials refrained from comment.
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.
