News Broadcasting
Ernst & Young’s Nitin Atroley to oversee corporate affairs at Star
NEW DELHI: The new year has brought with it a wave of new appointments at various media companies, be it at Star, Sony or Zee. Yesterday it was Sony which announced the hiring of former Star TV programming whizkid Tarun Katial. Today, it is the turn of Star India Pvt Ltd to loop in a new hire at the senior management level: Ernst & Young’s Nitin Atroley to oversee corporate affairs and communications.
Atroley is joining the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Star India as an executive vice-president within the next ten days.
The 40-something Atroley would be joining Star India from the management and audit firm. According to information available with indiantelevision.com, the present team responsible for corporate communications and public relations would report to him.
Atroley’s arrival in Star India would indicate that the company is envisioning a bigger role for itself in the country’s corporate world, and could well include an impending initial public offer, which has been talked about for the last several years.
It is also a pointer to the fact that Star India wants its top management, including CEO Peter Mukerjea and his deputy Sameer Nair, to concentrate on the big plans that are in the offing, rather than keep dashing from Mumbai to Delhi and other cities to undertake political and corporate fire-fighting.
With the media scene hotting up, it seems unlikely that the new recruitment drive in television will ease off. Observers expect several other movements, corporate and editorial, in the next six months. This would include changes in Star News, which, under a new management team headed by ABP group’s Aveek Sarkar, is bracing itself for fierce skirmishes on the news channel front led by the likes of Aaj Tak and NDTV India.
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.
