News Broadcasting
India News appoints Dinesh Gautam as executive editor
MUMBAI: India News of iTV Network has appointed Dinesh Gautam as its new executive editor. Prior to joining the organisation, he worked with ETV Bharat as editor for five Hindi news channels.
Gautam has been in the TV news industry for two decades. He commenced his career in 2001 at Zee Media as principal correspondent and anchor. After almost three years of his stint with the organisation, he made a move in 2005 as deputy editor senior anchor at Sahara Samay.
After almost a decade, in 2015, he joined Broadcast Initiatives Ltd—HDIL as deputy editor senior anchor. After gaining eleven months of experience with the company, he switched to JK 24×7 news channel as executive director senior anchor. Later, after a span of six months, he served Moonlight films and Theatre Studio in 2017, as creative director.
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.
