News Broadcasting
DD may advance DTH plans to Feb to coincide with Union Budget
NEW DELHI: India’s pubcaster Doordarshan, which has got government permission to start a KU-band direct-to-home television service in India, may advance the launch date to February end to coincide with the annual Union Budget presentation.
According to government sources, Prasar Bharati is exploring possibilities whether DD’s DTH service can be launched around 28 February, the date when normally the government of the day presents the Union Budget.
This is being done by Prasar Bharati, which oversees the functioning of DD and All India Radio, to take the live telecast of the Budget presentation proceedings to those areas of the country where cable and terrestrial television have failed to penetrate.
Prasar Bharati is an autonomous body, modelled on the lines of the British Broadcasting Corporation, but depends largely on government grants to carry out its role of a public service broadcaster.
The two-hour Budget speech and pre and post-Budget programmes are widely and avidly watched by Indians, especially the various industries, for its economic impact.
In recent years, apart from DD, private satellite channels have relied on the Budget-related programmes, including the live telecast of the finance minister’s speech, to mop up additional revenue from advertising.
Earlier in an interview, Prasar Bharati chief executive K.S. Sarma had told indiantelevision.com that DD’s DTH service, to be beamed through an Insat satellite, would be launched around April.
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.
