News Broadcasting
Maharashtra, WB bureaucrats ask for more time on CAS
NEW DELHI: CAS is slowly degenerating into being a complete failure.
A high-powered meeting of senior bureaucrats from four states where CAS (conditional access system) is being sought to be implemented ended with the expected thing happening. All the states requested to be given further time to mull over the rollout of addressability.
The state officials also indicated that the Centre must give them a new date for the implementation of CAS and that too “variable” ones. This means that different states are asking for different dates for rollout which in turn rules out a simultaneous implementation.
Though there is nothing official about it – but except Chennai – neither Mumbai nor Kolkata have bowed to the Centre’s diktat on CAS rollout citing their own reasons.
A senior official of the information and broadcasting ministry, which chaired the meeting on CAS, admitted, “You can say that CAS is moribund.”
Though Delhi has already been taken out of the rollout map, a bureaucrat from the union territory of Delhi was also present at today’s meeting. Last month, the central government had denotified Delhi from the CAS rollout map citing political reasons.
A senior bureaucrat from the West Bengal government is understood to have conveyed that CAS cannot be implemented in Kolkata because of the upcoming Durga Puja festivities, which would have the security forces busy, while Mumbai’s contention is that it is “studying” the security situation in the metropolis in the aftermath of the recent bomb blasts.
The states have also said that CAS’ rollout should be state’s responsibility and local committees should be set up to look into this issue.
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.
