News Broadcasting
Deferred live on DD: Nimbus to file reply 9 February
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court today issued notice to Nimbus Communications on a petition by Prasar Bharati challenging the order of the single bench last week permitting telecast of the ongoing one-day cricket series with West Indies with a seven-minute deferred telecast.
A Division Bench of the High Court headed by Chief Justice MK Sharma asked Nimbus, who own Neo Sports channel, to file their reply to the notice by 9 February.
The petition by Prasar Bharati has contended that the order of the single judge is violative of the principle of equitable justice as it treats viewers of satellite TV differently from those who receive signals terrestrially.
Earlier on 23 January, Justice SK Kaul had permitted Doordarshan to telecast the matches with a seven-minute deferred telecast. He had, however, permitted All India Radio to broadcast the commentary live.
The same court had a day later asked Nimbus to deposit Rs 55 million within a week, even as it gave the marketing rights to the former because it had said it could raise almost five times more than competing public broadcaster Prasar Bharati.
Meanwhile, the rights to market events on AIR’s 69 channels lies with Prasar Bharati, and the court will decide on the revenue sharing ratio on 10 February, when the rest of the contentious issues would also be taken up.
The court, however, held that though Prasar Bharati could stream the matches thorough its DTH platform, it would not allow any private DTH operator to access that and show the matches.
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.
