News Broadcasting
DishTV adds SS music to its offering
MUMBAI: Essel Group promoted Dish TV has signed an agreement to distribute Southern Spice Music (SS Music) on its direct-to-home (DTH) platform.
Martin Lottery Group-promoted music channel Southern Spice Music or SS Music is a multi-lingual music channel in India playing music in English, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi.
The music channel caters primarily the youth, but since music has no barriers, audiences of all ages get in tune with the channel, informs a media release.
Announcing the launch of SS Music on Dish TV, DishTV CEO Sunil Khanna said, “We are pleased to broadcast the popular Tamil channel to consumers on Dish TV platform.
“The inclusion of SS music, strengthens the Tamil entertainment on Dish TV for the city viewers. DishTV aims at being a complete entertainment solution for the people in Tamil Nadu, giving them the opportunity to upgrade to a superior entertainment experience with power of choice.”
SS Music promoter Santiago Martin adds,”Dishtv in a short span of time has shown impressive growth in penetration and has emerged as the largest distribution platform in terms of number of channels carried as well. Thus, we are delighted to be part of Dish TV bouquet”.
Now with SS Music, Dish TV viewers can enjoy the already existing JayaTV and other Tamil channels by virtue of being available on DD DTH, as both DTH platforms share a common satellite.
The media release also informs that DishTV has launched a customized offer at Chennai. With an objective to make DTH entertainment affordable the customers receives a dual benefit: a reduced hardware price and subscription fees for a year incorporated in the cost.
At Rs 3990, the customer will receive popular channels like ESPN Starsports, Cartoon Network and even HBO, only for Chennai.
Further by paying just Rs 1000 extra, the consumers can now enjoy a gamut of 110 channels.
With the extremely competitive price point offered, the company expects to increase the penetration of Dish TVin homes across the country, which makes difficult for any broadcaster to ignore this as a distribution platform.
Dish TV offers 13 radio channels in its bouquet, apart from a wide range of channels.
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.
