News Broadcasting
DD, Ten Sports deal still on ‘Ten’terhooks
MUMBAI: The telecast deal between Prasar Bharati and Ten Sports stands deadlocked as Prasar Bharati has not agreed to an offer of Ten Sports, which envisaged making available 10 signals to Doordarshan on low power transmitters, for non cable areas in non metros.
wAccording to Modi Entertainment Network chairman Lalit Modi, at the moment, as things stand, “it is a deadlock”. According to Ten Sports CEO Chris McDonald, the ministry had “requested us to look into the issues of making it available to a larger section of the population. We had come up with with a formula to which Doordarshan is not agreeable.”
Prasar Bharati CEO K S Sarma, who is currently camping in Mumbai, told indiantelevision.com, ” If Ten is to come on DD, they will have to pay us an opportunity cost of approximately $ three million.”
Reportedly meanwhile, the Chennai High Court today observed that cricket signals would have to be made available to the terrestrial broadcaster but the terrestrial broadcaster would have to pay a certain amount for the telecast rights.
The impasse continues, but the issue could well change colour in a matter of hours.
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.
