News Broadcasting
India Today Television & Twitter partner to launch Town Halls
MUMBAI: India Today Television has joined hands with Twitter in an exclusive partnership for conducting Town Halls on the social media platform.
The Twitter Town Halls will give an opportunity to followers on Twitter to engage with news makers, opinion makers and other eminent personalities.
Twitter followers can tweet their questions and the personality/guest will respond to the same during the Town Hall. This will be aired on India Today Television. The partnership also extends to the group’s Hindi news channel AajTak for relevant guests.
The India Today Group and Twitter have already aired Town Halls with Shah Rukh Khan and Kamal Hassan. The third episode in the series featuring Sri Sri Ravi Shankar will be aired this week-end.
India Today Group group editorial director – broadcast & new media Kalli Purie said, “Our sole objective through social media is to engage our followers and viewers in a dialogue on issues of national and global importance. Twitter Town Hall is a great format to ideate, debate and celebrate the spirit of freedom of expression. We trust that our social media followers are equally well informed to ask the right questions of their leaders. We will be rolling out many such templates to empower our end users.”
Twitter vice president – media for Asia-Pacific, Middle East and North Africa Rishi Jaitly added, “Twitter Town Halls have been used by global business and political leaders to connect with their followers and audiences at large for some time now. Twitter is the only platform in the world that is public, conversational, and real-time. The beauty of the platform is that it allows users to engage with influential personalities from different walks of life, and gives them a voice to be heard. This Twitter Town Hall will give users a chance to talk to and engage with influential icons and leaders from different walks of life for the first time.”
The India Today Group has over 6.26 million Twitter followers across its news handles.
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: 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.
