News Broadcasting
DD Sports to air Commonwealth Chess highlights
MUMBAI: DD Sports will have a 25 minute highlight package of The Commonwealth Chess Championship every night. The event takes place at Hotel Mirador in the suburb of Andheri from 10 – 19 January.
25 grandmasters and 50 International Masters will participate from 15 countries including Vietnam, Ukraine, Russia.
In addition to the pubcaster’s coverage, live online coverage will be available at Venus chess Academies website. Along with the Commonwealth Chess Championship, the International Open Chess tournament will also take place. The Gold medallist gets Rs 300,000, the silver medallist Rs 200,000 and the Bronze winner takes home Rs 100,000. The top seed is Britains super Grandmaster Nigel Short. The second seed is Indias K Sasikiran. In the womans section, grandmaster S. Vijaylaxmi will battle it out with Koneru Humpy for the crown.
The event is being staged at a cost of Rs six million. The sponsors include MTNL. Addressing the media last evening Short said, “I last participated in a Commonwealth tournament in 1985. While the draw is a strong one there is nobody that really strikes me with terror. India is not a developing chess nation but a developed one. What youll need to do is hold international tournaments at regular intervals so that the young players get exposed to the Grandmasters and make their way up. India has a good chance of a medal at this years Chess Olympiad.”
Short also said that he was not in favour of Chess being a part of the Olympic Games.”I am a purist to a certain extent. Chess is the ultimate mind sport. When it becomes a small event in the grand scheme of things it gets lost easily.”
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.
