News Broadcasting
DD, NDTV, CBS win Commonwealth Bcast awards
NEW DELHI: Indian pubcaster Doordarshan and the Prannoy Roy-promoted NDTV, amongst others, bagged the Commonwealth Broadcasting Awards 2006, which were announced today here.
Other winners included the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The awards, sponsored by World Bank, UNICEF, Amnesty International and Rolls Royce, were announced at a glittering function this evening as part of the on-going 26th Commonwealth Broadcasting Associations general conference.
Doordarshan bagged the CBA-World Bank Award for Programmes on Development Issues for From Fallows to Food Baskets, produced by Doordarshans Hyderabad centre.
The programme is a marvelous depiction of how villagers in India are producing more at low cost, by involving the community, particularly, women. The programme was made in collaboration with Community Media Trust, Pastapur, Andhra Pradesh.
Doordarshan has also won the CBA-UNICEF Award for Childrens Programme for the television drama Joymoti, which is the story of a girl whose father works as a labourer in a tea garden and how she takes up the challenge of education.
The programme was made by Doordarshans Silchar centre.
The other awards given away today are as follows:
* CBA-Rolls Royce Award for Exceptional News Feature went to Canadian Broadcasting Corporations programme A War in Words: An Iraqi Family Diary.
* CBA-Amnesty International Award for Human Rights Programme went to Australian Broadcasting Corporations programme A Knifes Edge.
* CBA-IBC Award for Innovative Engineering went to NDTV.
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.
