News Broadcasting
DD News to air special 30-minute show on Olympics
NEW DELHI: DD News will telecast daily a 30-minute special sports programme titled Beijing 2008 – Quest for Glory, from 7-25 August at 7 pm.
The programme will have inputs from the live coverage of the events that will be telecast from the games venue and the discussions on the day’s round up at the Olympic Games.
While India’s participation in the Olympics in Beijing will be telecast live on the national network of Doordarshan DD 1, the entire games will be telecast live/deferred live on the pubcaster’s sports channel DD Sports.
In addition, DD 1 and DD Sports will telecast live the opening and closing ceremonies on 8 August and 24 August respectively
On the first day, the live anchoring/discussion will commence from 5:30 pm followed by the Opening Ceremony which is expected to go on till around 9:05 pm.
The Closing Ceremony of the Olympics will be telecast live from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm or till the end. DD Sports will telecast live all India participating events with customized commentary.
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.
