News Broadcasting
First NT Awards Delhi jury meet ends, 200 entries screened
NEW DELHI: The three-day New Delhi chapter of the jury meetings for nominating awardees for the country’s first NT Awards of Indiantelevision.com concluded here today, after the jurors watched close to 200 representations sent by various news channels.
The channels had sent in their representations in various categories – with each category having separate Hindi and English sections.
Of the entries received, those in the categories of Entertainment, Lifestyle & Fashion and Talk Show (Hindi) – were screened today and were evaluated by a jury comprising some of the leading scribes and creative persons in the respective fields.
The categories screened yesterday – the second day of the jury meeting – had included both hard news and business news reports.
Of these, the hard news segment included daily newscast (Hindi and English); news documentary programme (Hindi and English) and crime show (Hindi).
The business section included various other categories, like talk shows, news reports and documentary among others, for which jurors with specialisation in business reporting met in a screening room separate from the one in which the hard news items were watched.
The jurors found the entire exercise free and independent, with entries being marked first on a rough score card. These entries had to be transferred by the jurors themselves into the final ballot, and signed by them.
The final ballots were then shipped to the independent auditing team from the reputed agency, Ernst & Young, who were present in the same building complex in a separate room.
The ballots marked by them were then tabulated by the auditors and the names of the top five were given in print in the stationary of the auditing company.
Finally, the jurors were required to sign the names of the top five sent in by the auditing firm, though the names of the final winners are still being kept a strict secret known to the auditors alone.
The elaborate procedure has been made fool proof and tamper free, in the usual international standard and procedure followed.
The jurors had the freedom to do two things: one, decide how long of each item they would like to watch; and two, whether an individual entry did not at all fit into the category for which the particular channel had sent the representation. In both instances, the jury had to come to a consensus, without which no decision on these two issues were taken.
The Mumbai chapter of jury meeting will take place later this month, with categories like sports, promos, etc., being evaluated for nomination.
The final award ceremony will be held in Delhi in the middle of July and prizes for the best products in at least 50 categories would be given away.
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.
