News Broadcasting
DD invites proposals for festival extravaganza
National broadcaster Doordarshan (DD) has invited proposals from television programme producers for programmes on Diwali and New Year’s Eve.
The programme on Diwali, which falls on 4 November 2002, will be telecast from 9:00 pm to 10:00 pm while that on New Year’s Eve on 31 December 2002, will begin at 10:30 pm upto 12:30 am. The programmes will be based on songs, dances, poems, skits and celebrity shows relevant for the occasion along with greetings.
According to an advertisement issued in newspapers, the proposals should be furnished with a non-refundable processing fee in bank draft of Rs 10,000 and should contain the storyline, broad outline of treatment, details of artists, participants, anchor and celebrities. In order to substantiate the production quality a show-reel of an earlier telecast must also be submitted.
Those producers who have an experience in production and marketing of programmes for not less than 150 hours and an annual turnover of more than Rs 20 million, have to submit their proposals separately for each event.
The proposals for the Diwali programme can be submitted latest by 10 July while those for the New Year’s Eve programme can be submitted by 31 July.
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.
