News Broadcasting
HTMT acquires Source One Communications USA
MUMBAI: Hinduja TMT (HTMT) has signed an agreement with Georgeson Shareholder Communications, Inc. to acquire 100 per cent of Source One Communications Inc.USA (SOC) in an all-cash deal of approximately US$ 8.5 million, funded entirely through internal accruals.
SOC has operations in New Jersey (USA), Toronto (Canada) and Manila (Philippines) through a subsidiary called Source One Communications Asia (SOCA).
SOCA is a joint venture company set up in 2001 between SOC (57.5 per cent ownership) and Customer Contact Center Inc. (c3), Manila (42.5 per cent ownership). It may be recalled that HTMT recently acquired controlling interest in c3, which has independent revenue of USD 6.8 Million and for which HTMT paid USD 3.9 million. With the acquisition of SOC and its current shareholding in SOCA, HTMT has consolidated its ownership of SOCA, informs an official release.
SOC had consolidated revenue of USD 15.87 million in its fiscal year ended 30 June 2004. It currently operates a total of 500 call center seats in USA, Canada and the Philippines, which is growing today. Source One has on-shore, near-shore and off-shore call center facilities at USA, Canada and Philippines. It has multi lingual capabilities of French & Spanish besides English. The company has marketing and client management teams located in New Jersey, adds the release.
Together with c3, the total number of seats in Manila amount to over 1000. The total number of clients served by SOC, SOCA and c3 are 22. These clients include multinationals and Fortune 500 companies in different verticals like pharmaceutical products, consumer electronics and household products, financial services, energy and utilities.
Commenting on the SOC acquisition, HTMT COO K observed: “Source One is an excellent strategic fit to our past acquisition of c3. The current acquisition is a definitive step in the evolution of HTMT into a global ITES company. Cross selling BPO, call center services with multi lingual capabilities, and IT in diversified verticals across different geographical locations now provides HTMT a competitive edge against its peers leading to potential scaling and higher profitability. We believe that the scaling up of both SOCA and c3 operations based on excellent customer response to the quality and competitiveness delivered, is likely to considerably improve the topline and bottomline of the entities.”
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.
