News Broadcasting
Hallmark bags bunch of Disney titles
MUMBAI: Family entertainment channel Hallmark is adding to its film title offerings with some new acquisitions from Disney. It will also be unveiling a Valentine Movie Festival next week.
The channel has reached an agreement with Buena Vista Television (which syndicates television programming for Disney) for exclusive cable rights to almost 150 film titles, which include contemporary and classic, such as Jungle 2 Jungle, Flubber, Mighty Joe Young, Old Yeller, The Absent Minded Professor and Herbie, the Love Bug .
Hallmark has also scheduled its big film titles keeping in mind the fact tha cricket is bound to take away audiences during normal viewing times. According to Rohinton Maloo, who heads Cutting Edge Media, which manages ad sales and promotions for Hallmark in India: “The movies on Hallmark will be shown at 10:30 pm as most of the matches get over then.”
Next week the channel will also unveil a Valentine festival as a countdown to Valentine’s Day. “We will be showing a series of Hollywood movies along with a mix of non-theatre movies,” says Maloo.
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.
