News Broadcasting
India Today’s Aaj Tak TV makes debut
The India Today group’s TV Today flagged off its 24 hour Hindi news channel Aaj Tak on 31 December. The channel was launched by Law, Justice and Company Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley at a late night function. The Group has already invested Rs 600 million in the channel on state-of-the-art equipment and 18 bureaus across the country out of a total investment of Rs 800 million. The channel proposes to target the vast 14-15 million Hindi-watching Indian cable TV homes.
TV Today had a contract with DD till March 2001 to continue supplying it with its daily news and current affairs show Aaj Tak. The group however decided to withdraw from the DD platform much earlier.
In its new avatar Aaj Tak will extend its particular brand of news coverage to thematic programmes on issues such as health, lifestyle, bollywood, and information technology.
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.
