News Broadcasting
IL&FS fund invests Rs 400 million in TV18’s Global Broadcast News
MUMBAI: Global Broadcast News (GBN), a Television Eighteen Group company, has raised Rs 400 million from Leverage India Fund, a fund managed by IL&FS Investment Managers Ltd (IIML).
Indiantelevision.com learns that GBN has been valued at slightly over Rs 4 billion.
According to sources close to the deal, Leverage India Fund will hold a minority stake in GBN at a later stage. GBN owns and runs the newly launched English-language general news channel, CNN IBN.
“The support and funding that we have received from a strong investor like IIML puts GBN in a strong spot to build on its growing leadership position within the Indian broadcasting industry,” GBN director and TV18 Group managing director Raghav Bahl said in a communication to the Bombay Stock
Exchange today.
GBN, which has plans to run a slew of TV channels, had inked a co-branding deal in 2005 year with Turner International (a Time Warner company), owners of CNN.
Last year, the TV18 Group had announced a restructuring to comply with government norms related to news channels that mandates foreign investment in news channel uplinking from India cannot be over 26 per cent.
The business news operations (including Awaaz and CNBC TV18) is being consolidated in TV18, whereas Network 18 India Holdings Ltd will hold majority stakes in TV18 and GBN.
Television Eighteen stock today closed on the Bombay Stock Exchange at Rs 411.40, having opened the day at Rs 420.
(1 US$ = Rs 44)
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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.
