News Broadcasting
It’s Gauri vs Saloni as Star Plus slots KAA for 9:30 pm; to launch on 29 August
MUMBAI: The stage is set for another interesting contest in the Hindi GEC battlefield. In a significant move, Star Plus has decided to wind up Kavyanjali and replace the soap with another Balaji Telefilms production Karam Apnaa Apnaa (KAA).
Slotted for 9:30 pm, Monday to Thursday, KAA will lock horns with Zee TV’s driver show Saat Phere.
Star Plus will launch KAA on 29 August. According to Star India senior creative director Shailja Kejriwal, the channel will use the soap, which will have as its principal characters Bengalis, to target Eastern India.
“We have lots of soaps targeting Gujarat and Punjab, but nothing for the East. We are filling this void with KAA. The story has a Kolkata backdrop and the look and feel is very much Bengali. Then, we have many Bengali artists, including Roopa Ganguly and Jaya Bhattacharya, featuring in the serial,” says Kejriwal.
Another strategy Star Plus is initiating with KAA is to reach out to the young audience during the launch phase itself. Accordingly, the marketing wing of Star India has devised various marketing activities and one of these is to hype up the lead character’s marriage.
“We understand that the youth audience plays a significant role in the success of a television programme in India. Hence, we are making our best attempts to woo them during the first phase of our launch itself. We are trying to reach the youth in the age group of 20-28 through various activities woven around Gauri’s (the protagonist) wedding,” says Satya Raghavan of Star India Marketing.
Explaining the strategies further, Raghavan adds, “Over the next three months, we will be constantly in touch with young people through various touch points. We will get in touch with them through various methods – all connected to the marriage process. These include wedding shopping, venue search and astrology. The activities will be conducted in a sustained manner, to make the most of the upcoming marriage season.”
KAA will also see Balaji offering another debutant to Indian television. The new face Pallavi Subhash will don the title role of Gauri. The star cast also includes Apra Mehta, Salil Ankola, Delnaz Paul and Geetanjali Tikekar.
KAA tells the story of Gauri who hails from a small hamlet of West Bengal. She is a very simple girl without any ambition, who has put the interests of her family before herself and has dedicated her life to make her father and her sister happy. The only dream she has is that after marriage, she should live a simple and happy life with her husband and her kids. Gauri is on the threshold of turning her dream into reality by getting married to her fiance, Shashank, but she could never have imagined that destiny has something different in store for her. And thereafter starts the journey of this simple girl, of the hardships she faces and how she strives to overcome them.
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.
