News Broadcasting
ICC welcomes Indian interest in hosting ICC Twenty20 World Championship
MUMBAI: The International Cricket Council ICC President Percy Sonn today welcomed an expression of interest from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to host the ICC Twenty20 World Championship in 2013.
Sonn says, “It is very encouraging for the future of this fledgling format that even before we have hosted the first ICC Twenty20 World Championship in 2007, countries are queuing up to host future tournaments.
“The ICC Board made a strategic decision earlier this year to leave the host of the 2013 event open when it set the calendar of ICC events through to 2015. We wanted to see how popular the new format would be before determining the most appropriate host.
“It is still seven years away and we won’t be deciding the host for some time but it’s always good to see our Members backing the competitions that we run.”
The inaugural ICC Twenty20 World Championship will take place next September in South Africa while the 2009 event is due to be staged in England. The expression of interest on behalf of the BCCI to host the 2013 event was made by IS Bindra at an ICC meeting in Dubai this week.
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.
