News Broadcasting
Cyrus Oshidar quits MTV, Ashish Patil made MTV GM
MUMBAI: MTV Networks’ senior vice president (content and creative) Cyrus Oshidar has put in his papers.
After ten years, Oshidar who formed one of the Old Guard at the iconic music channel brand, is teaming up with 37-year-old Alok Kejriwal, founder of Contest2Win, a site that aggregates contests and trivia for corporations. Kejriwal also owns sites like Media2Win and the just launched Games2Win.
Following Oshidar’s departure, MTV Networks India vice president and GM creative and content Ashish Patil has been elevated and given additional charge as GM and business head of the music channel. Patil was earlier reporting directly in to Oshidar.
Says Oshidar of his decision to move on, “I’ve done the advertising bit and the channel bit. I see the cutting edge challenge now being in the online space. Additionally, me and Alok go back a long way so there is a comfort level there as well.”
Amit Jain, managing director – MTV Networks India, said, “Oshi’s uniquely wired mind has played a significant role in establishing MTV as an ‘unpredictably cool’ brand over the last so many years. It was surely his ingenuity that started the trend of a new genre of creativity – that of ‘not taking oneself seriously’.” Jain added, “Over the years, Oshi has nurtured many creative minds within MTV and we are confident that the legacy he leaves behind will be aptly taken forward by his exceptionally talented team.”
Oshidar further added, All these years, what kept me excited was the fact that MTV is one of the very few brands in the world that give you the freedom to experiment and redefine the creative space – be it the ‘in-your-face’ humor or ‘laughing at oneself’ or ‘silly street lingo’. I’ll surely miss my friends and the sheer madness that MTV office stinks of.”
As regards his new port of call, Oshidar will however, not be working full time at Contest2Win. He will be devoting three days a week there and the remaining two days of the week he hopes to work on a project-to-project basis in the area where he is most comfortable – consumer facing youth community communications.
One of the other factors that prompted Oshidar’s decision to quit might well have been the scythe that went through the MTV Networks Asia Pacific Singapore headquarters in early October, which lead to 84 redundancies and coincided with the departure of MTV Networks Asia Pacific president Nigel Robbins and also saw regional functions and corporate roles decentralized from Singapore.
Oshidar, who had been expecting to move to a bigger role within the MTV Networks system outside India, probably felt that he was stagnating in his current position.
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.
