News Broadcasting
Indian filmmaker wins top honours in the US
MUMBAI: Renowned documentary filmmaker Dr S Krishnaswamy (of Krishnaswamy Associates of Chennai) has won the US International Film & Video Festival’s lifetime achievement award this year. Krishnaswamy is the first-ever filmmaker from the Afro-Asian region to be selected for this honour.
He was awarded in absentia at the Wyndham Bel Age Hotel in Los Angeles along with other annual awards.
Krishnaswamy’s major works include Indus Valley to Indira Gandhi, INDIA 5555 and Reality Behind Religion, which includes interviews with the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Swami Ranganathananda and Acharya Tulsi.
Into its 38th year, the US International Film & Video Festival is one of the world’s largest competitions for television documentary, industrial and informational productions.
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.
