News Broadcasting
Former CNN chief named MSNBC head
MUMBAI: Former CNN chief and veteran ABC executive Rick Kaplan was named president of MSNBC, on Tuesday. The announcement seems like latest effort in a bid to revive the struggling No. 3 cable news channel.
Kaplan replaces Erik Sorenson, who has run MSNBC since August 1998 as general manager and who will now join the news division of parent network NBC, says a media report.
Kaplan’s tenure at CNN ended in 2000 with him quitting amid a major management shake-up as CNN’s ratings languished near 13-year low. Kaplan’s appointment puts him in charge of a network that has failed several times to assemble a winning prime-time schedule and has struggled to define itself beside its two larger rivals, Fox News Channel and CNN.
Kaplan ran CNN’s domestic operations from 1997 to 2000, and then taught at Harvard. In 2003 he returned to ABC News, where he had been a longtime producer, in a senior management role planning coverage of the Iraq war and presidential campaign
News Broadcasting
Book Cricket gets a digital century on News18 amid T20 fever
Nostalgic classroom game revamped in English, Hindi plus Telugu on web and app.
MUMBAI: When the T20 World Cup fever hits fever pitch, News18 decides to flip the script straight back to the classroom. The digital news platform has revived the timeless schoolyard favourite Book Cricket as an interactive online game, perfectly timed to ride the cricket wave gripping fans across the globe. The reimagined Book Cricket ditches textbooks for smartphones, blending old-school nostalgia with modern gameplay. Once a sneaky recess pastime played by flicking book pages to score runs, the digital version now offers seamless fun for anyone craving a quick cricket fix between overs.
Available in English, Hindi and Telugu (with more languages planned across News18’s network), the game sits within the platform’s fast-growing gaming portfolio of over 20 titles, all built in-house. It joins event-driven hits like ‘Kursi Catcher’ and ‘Result Rewind’ during the 2025 Bihar Assembly Elections, plus festive specials such as ‘Durga’s Astras’ for Durga Puja and ‘Mouse Modak’ for Ganesh Chaturthi.
News18 Digital CEO Mitul Sangani said, “Gaming is a key pillar of our engagement strategy. At News18, we uniquely combine our newsroom agility with immersive gaming experiences. By blending credible content with interactive formats, we are creating meaningful engagement in an era defined by shrinking attention spans and evolving consumption habits.”
Select titles have expanded beyond News18.com to CNBC-TV18.com and Firstpost.com, reflecting the network’s push to deepen user interaction across platforms. The Book Cricket game is live now at https://www.news18.com/games/book-cricket/.
In a tournament where every boundary counts, News18’s digital Book Cricket proves the simplest games can still deliver the biggest smiles no syllabus required, just pure cricket joy one page-flip at a time.
