News Broadcasting
Debate on cable industry in New Delhi tomorrow
The Center for Advocacy and Research (CFAR) is organising a discussion on ‘The Cable Industry and the Viewers: Setting New Norms and Standards’ tomorrow, 30 April.
The two-hour debate to be held at the Indian Women Press Corps (IWPC) office in New Delhi, plans to be the beginning of a series of interventions the centre has planned around the issue. CFAR hopes to initiate a process through which various stakeholders in the television industry come together and share their experiences and vision for the future.
Television technology has become the main concern among all its stakeholders, says CFAR. While viewers have been expressing their concern on rising subscription charges, the indifferent attitude of cable operators towards quality of service, little or no impact of digitisation on quality of images, other stakeholders (broadcasters, MSOs, cable operators and policy makers) have their own share of concerns and grievances, it notes.
As the shift from the present system to the Conditional Access System is being planned, the centre plans to initiate a process through which the stakeholders come together to find some common solutions. CFAR regularly conducts public interest research with a focus on gender and development issues, and has over the last six years, built up a consumer response to media content in the form of an audience collective called the Viewers Forum. It operates out of Delhi, Ahmedabad and Lucknow and in Nadwasarai village at Mau District in Uttar Pradesh.
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.
