News Broadcasting
HTMT gets Bombay High Court approval for demerger
MUMBAI: Hinduja TMT’s scheme of demerger (Scheme of Arrangement and Reconstruction) has got sanction from the Bombay High Court. The demerged IT/BPO business under a new company is expected to list in two months.
“We expect the entire process to take two months. The fixing of the record date should take a month and then we have to get the approval from Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for listing,” says an executive of the company.
HTMT is unifying its media subsidiaries under one umbrella while spinning off its IT/ITES business into a separate entity. HTMT Technologies Ltd will hold the IT/BPO business. The company proposes to change this name to HTMT Global Solutions.
The residual HTMT with media and real estate has a net worth of Rs 5.77 billion and a cash balance of Rs 2.06 billion (as of 1 October 2006). The IT/BPO company has a net worth of Rs 4.97 billion and a cash balance of Rs 200 million.
HTMT also informed BSE that the court sanctioned the “reduction of the issued, subscribed and paid up equity share capital of the company, effected by reducing the face value of the equity shares to 1 equity share of Rs 5 each (from 1 equity shares of Rs 10) and simultaneously, consolidating 2 such equity shares of Rs 5 each into 1 equity share of Rs 10 each.”
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.
