News Broadcasting
ET Now edges past NDTV Profit in metros
MUMBAI: ET Now, the two-month old channel from Times Global Broadcasting, has edged past NDTV Profit in the metro markets, the main revenue pull for English business news channels.
As per Tam data for the week ended 15 August (CS 25+, metros), ET Now has increased its market share to 26 per cent, from prior week’s 21 per cent. NDTV Profit’s channel share has dipped to 21 per cent, from 28 per cent.
Market leader CNBC TV18’s share has remained unchanged at 47 per cent among the English business news channels, while UTVi is at the bottom of the heap with a measly six per cent share.
Says Times Global Broadcasting CEO Chintamani Rao, “It is still very early in the life of a channel, but the data for our first eight weeks is trending nicely and we are quite satisfied.”
Last week, ET Now said it would continue to ramp up distribution in some of the key business markets in India.
Meanwhile, in the All India market, NDTV Profit (20 per cent share) is still ahead of ET Now (13 per cent), but the difference between the two has come down to 7 per cent only.
CNBC TV18 is leading in the All India market with a 64 per cent share, while UTVi is lagging way behind with a four per cent share.
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: 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.
