News Broadcasting
Crown Media talks with Modi Entertainment on Kermit; merges service with Hallmark in Asia
US-based Crown Media Holdings, parent of Crown Media International, is in talks with the Modi Entertainment Network (MEN) to set up an Indian joint venture for kid’s channel, Kermit. Crown is exploring whether a relationship of this kind will help increase its distribution and advertising revenue.
Kermit has been distributed by MEN in India over the past year or so and more than 5,000 IRDs have been placed with cable operators to enable them to receive the encrypted service. The channel charges cable operators a carriage fee of around Re 1 per subscriber. Indian cable ops have also paid up advances for the IRDs.
Elsewhere in Asia, Crown has taken the decision to relaunch Kermit as a day part service on Hallmark, which is also being recast and reintroduced with a snazzier look and better packaging. Kermit will cease to be telecast as a separate 24 hour feed over Asia from 1 November.
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.
