News Broadcasting
Hanuman, Chhota Birbal next on Cartoon Network
MUMBAI: Hanuman and Chhota Birbal will be the latest additions this year to the seven locally acquired animation series on Cartoon Network in the last two years.
A Pentamedia creation Alibaba will also go on air on the channel by 27 July, according to Turner Entertainment Network senior VP Ian Diamond. This follows the launch of Tenali Raman, the antics of the popular minister in the court of Krishnadevaraya, a 13 part series that kicked off on 14 June and will be aired weekends. Tenali Raman is produced by the Hyderabad based Toonz Animation for Cartoon Network.
Cartoon Network globally has in fact set aside an amount of $500 million over a period of five years for the creation of original animation, says Diamond. Locally produced animation with themes revolving around Indian mythical and historical characters has in fact been a hit with Indian audiences and viewership now touches 18 million households, as against 15 million last year, according to Diamond.
Chhota Birbal is the product of an agreement with Climb Media and is a fictional take on a time when Mughal Emperor Akbar and his minister, friend and wisest counsel, Birbal were kids. The series showcases their fictional baby-sized adventures. Alibaba on the other hand, comes from the Pentamedia stable, which earlier produced Pandavas and Sinbad series for Cartoon Network.
“We are very serious about cartoons,” says Diamond, maintaining that the channel is concentrating on a strong mix of Japanese, Indian and Chinese animation in addition to the eternal Western favourites that are run on the channel.
The rise of India as an ‘animation hub’ has helped the channel source more content from within the country, avers Diamond. The high cost per episode has however impeded the introduction of longer series thus far. All the series thus far have had runs of a maximum of 13 episodes.
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.
