News Broadcasting
Industry’s in trouble, but there’s hope
MUMBAI: CNBC‘s “The Entertainment Industry: Taking The Big Leap” brainstorming session held on 19 December in Mumbai, resulted in a lot of soul-searching amongst industry experts and heated debates involving the reasons for 2002 being billed as the year of ‘no-show‘ business.
The interactive session was aimed at generating interest in CNBC‘s new programme That‘s Entertainment. The programme is targeted at the ‘behind-the-scenes‘ happenings and the economics (should we say hard-hit) of the Rs 15 billion media industry.
The panel on the dais had CNBC Mumbai bureau chief Govindraj Ethiraj and his colleague Anuradha Sengupta moderating the discussion and inviting comments from an illustrious gathering comprising of SET India CEO Kunal Dasgupta, IDBI chairman and MD P P Vora, Reliance Entertainment chairman All India Film Producers‘ Council president Amit Khanna, UTV chairman Ronnie Screvwalla, ENIL MD A P Parigi, Shringar Films‘ director Shravan Shroff and Nimbus Communication chairman and MD Harish Thawani.
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The leaders in the business of entertainment rubbed shoulders with entertainment analysts, celebrities and superstars as the CNBC team sought insights and understanding on what makes the industry tick. The audience comprised of an illustrious gathering of people from various fields such as the film industry‘s producers, distributors, financiers; the TV producers, programmers, actors; radio a KPMG executive director Rajesh Jain kicked off the proceedings with a presentation on the mechanics of the entertainment industry. There were contrasting views offered by the panelists and the members of the audience on several issues: whether the Indian film industry scene was as bad as was perceived; whether the Hindi film industry deserves the attention it gets; whether creativity was being killed by money-minded producers; whether the content creators were in sync with the audience preferences; piracy and pilferage; the alternative streams of entertainments such as gaming, animation, live entertainment and home videos. Finally UTV‘s Biren Ghose summed up the feelings by saying that the entertainment industry must give adequate importance to the four key elements of the entertainment industry: the structural capital, the human capital, the intellectual capital and the customer capital. |
nd music industry head-honchos; and the media. Offering their views were film directors and producers Ramesh Sippy, Mukesh Bhatt and Manoj Desai; actor-producer Shekhar Suman; UTV COO of animation Biren Ghose; Saregama vice president Atul Churamani; TAM India CEO L.V Krishnan; TV programming executives Rekha Nigam and Nupur Asthana; and indiantelevision.com‘s Anil Wanvari.
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.
