News Broadcasting
GloboSat to distribute SaharaOne channels in UK, Europe
MUMBAI: In a bid to garner international subscription revenues and also expand its footprint in UK and Europe, SaharaOne Media and Entertainment has entered into a long term deal with New York based broadcast distribution outfit GloboSat Entertainment in order to help the company launch its channel services at various countries.
SaharaOne Media and Entertainment CEO Shantonu Aditya says, “Through the association with GloboSat Entertainment, we are looking forward to the expansion of our channels in newer markets through this partnership so as to entertain our viewers worldwide.”
The company is also eyeing broadband as well as mobile platforms in the US. GloboSat Entertainment is said to be in talks with a couple of moblie companies in this regard.
One such company that the GloboSat is talking to for carrying the two Sahara channels (Sahara One and Filmy) is US based made for mobile company Ithentic.
The channels will soon be on JumpTV, the subscription-based broadcaster of ethnic television over the internet. JumpTV already streams other Indian channels SET, India TV News, Kairali TV, People TV and Amrita TV.
GloboSat president and CEO Sudhir Vaishnav says, “Our strategic partnerships with DTH, cable, broadband, IPTV, mobile and other platforms spanning across North and South America, Europe and UK help our broadcast partners to build international presence faster.”
The media company will soon launch the channels SaharaOne and Filmy in UK and Europe. The two channels will soon be visible in Bangladesh as well. The channels will also be accessible on Rogers Cable in Canada.
The general entertainment channel SaharaOne already has its presence in US on Echostar. And the movie channel Filmy is offered on DirecTV, the other DTH platform in US controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
The two channels have recently been launched in Nepal and Maldives. The company now plans to push SaharaOne in the Middle-East, where the movie channel has already made its entry via the Pehla platform.
The company is also targeting to push the two channels in Africa as well as in Australia in due course.
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.
