News Broadcasting
Hindustan Times to host online school quiz ‘The Class Act’ on 23 January
Mumbai: Hindustan Times will be hosting an online school quiz called “The Class Act” on 23 January. The grand finale will be live broadcasted on the official HT School YouTube channel on Republic Day.
“The quiz is open to all students of grades 1–12 across the country and a total of Rs 1.25 lakh Amazon vouchers are up for grabs. All participants will also be awarded a participation certificate from Hindustan Times,” said the statement.
“The Class Act” will see renowned quizmasters Dr Navin Jayakumar and HT Labs co-founder and CEO Avinash Mudaliar test participants on various general topics. Dr Jayakumar is the founding member of The Quiz Foundation of India and is also the quizmaster for reputed national quizzes such as the ‘Landmark Quiz,’ the ‘Murugappa Madras Quotient School Quiz,’ and the ‘Rotary Galaxy Science and Technology Quiz.’ “Quizzing is a sport and not a test of IQ. It is a sport involving bits of information – facts that may or may not be of practical use but which are always interesting. And like all sports, practice makes perfect,” said Dr Navin Jayakumar.
In his decades of quizzing experience, Avinash Mudaliar from HT Labs has hosted several national quizzes like ‘The EY Knowledge Quiz,’ ‘Microsoft Bhasha India,’ and ‘GIM Wizbiz.’ “A good quizzer is also good at lateral thinking and is seldom just a ‘rattu’ (one who mugs up information from some source prior to a quiz). Contrary to popular belief, you can seldom win a quiz these days with that strategy, as quizzing today requires you to immerse yourself in the knowledge that is at your fingertips and connect the dots between various points of information to arrive at a possibly right answer,” stated Mudaliar.
In consideration of the pandemic and safety norms, ClassAct 2022 Quiz will be conducted online. It will unfold over two rounds: prelims and finale. The quiz will broadly be divided into two categories—the Junior category, comprising students of grades 1 to 5 and the Senior category, comprising students of grades 6 to 12.
Taking place on 23 January at 11 a.m, Prelims will test students’ accuracy and speed. The quiz will be conducted on the Quizizz platform. Links sent to participants’ registered email ID by 10:45 a.m on 23 January will be active for a stipulated period of time from 11 a.m to 11:45 am.
While the Finale is for the top performers in the Senior category, there are Amazon vouchers for the top 20 Juniors, based on their Prelims scores. The top 100 contestants of the Senior category will make it to the Finale. The Quizmasters’ decision will be final and binding on all matters.
“Registration for the quiz is free. Participants will only have to fill an online registration form on HT School. Registered students will receive updates about the Quiz on their registered email ID/mobile number. The links to access the Prelims and Finale rounds will also be shared on the registered email IDs. Registrations will close on 23 January at 10 a.m,” said the statement.
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.
