News Broadcasting
Hong Kong’s GSB slashes pay TV charges
MUMBAI: The tough competition prevailing in the pay-television market has forced the Hong Kong based pay-TV operator Galaxy Satellite Broadcasting to bring down its service charge by 23.8 per cent.
“The company has cut the monthly charge for its three-month-old exTV service from $168 to $128. Customers would need to sign up for 12 months to take advantage of the lower price,” GSB’s pay TV channel exTV chief operating officer Jackey Chan Sek-nin is quoted in media reports as saying.
Galaxy Satellite Broadcasting Limited (GSB) is a joint venture of Intelsat, a leading global communications provider, and Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), Hong Kong’s prominent premium content provider and broadcaster.
The company has been providing uplink / downlink and broadcasting services for channel providers and telecommunication companies in the Asia Pacific region since 2000.
Not so long ago, rival broadcaster Yes TV had announced its plans to surrender the channel’s pay-television licence to the broadcasting authority. Taiwan’s leading broadcaster TV plus had wound up its pay-channel business last month.
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.
