News Broadcasting
IL&FS sells 4 million IBN18 shares for Rs 410 million
MUMBAI: IL&FS Private Equity Trust has sold four million shares of IBN18, a Network18 Group company, for Rs 410 million.
IL&FS offloaded the IBN18 shares in the open market at Rs 100.25 per share. IBN18 houses news channels CNN IBN, IBN7 and IBN Lokmat.
IL&FS sold to Talma Chemical Industries and Indea Long Term Opportunities Master Fund in two bulk deals. There were other buyers as well which did not get reflected in bulk deals.
Talma Chemical Industries purchased 1.7 million IBN18 shares, paying out around Rs 170.42 million. Indea Long Term Opportunities Mssaster Fund, on the other hand, picked up 1 million shares for around Rs 100.25 million.
Shares of IBN18 closed Tuesday at Rs 114.95 on the BSE, up 14.95 per cent over the previous close.
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.
