News Broadcasting
Kumar Mangalam Birla to co-host Star News post budget analysis
MUMBAI: In what can be called as a coup of sorts, Star News has roped in media magnate Kumar Mangalam Birla for a special post budget analysis on the show Sapno Ka Saudagar.
Birla will be co-hosting the show along with host Gaurav Banerjee. The show, which will air on 28 February at 8:30 pm onwards, will see Birla as the spokesperson of the channel who will answer viewers’ questions and give expert analysis of the budget.
A company release informs that this is probably the first time that a business tycoon has been roped in exclusively by a channel as a co-host for the show.
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.
