News Broadcasting
Marathon IBF meeting on CAS ends with agreement on way forward
The Indian Broadcasting Foundation meeting on CAS – or conditional access system – held at the offices of Discovery in New Delhi ended after a marathon five hour session with head honchos of channels having tired smiles on their faces. In attendance were Star India’s Peter Mukerjea, SET India’s Kunal Dasgupta, Discovery India’s Deepak Shourie, ESPN-Star Sports’ Manu Sawhney, Turner Broadcasting’s Anshuman Misra and Zee TV’s Sunil Khanna.
The meeting covered a range of issues related to CAS right from technology (analogue or digital – what is the way forward?), to the cost of the addressable set top box to the mode of financing (lease or bank finance etc).
The IBF committee concluded that the task force on CAS should give broadcasters a chance to spell out the details for the transition towards addressability. And that they would have to meet over the next few days to thrash out the details of the way forward. The IBF members also said that the issue of CAS should be referred to the Parliamentary Select committee headed by parliamentarian Somnath Chatterjee in the interest of the consumer. Observers see in this an effort by the IBF to bury CAS in ordinate delays as the committee has not been able to move on the Convergence Bill for a long time now and is unlikely to do so in future too.
A source close to the discussions said that there was an undercurrent of resentment against Essel group and Zee TV chairman Subhash Chandra for openly endorsing CAS in isolation of the IBF yesterday. “In principle, all present agreed that there is no getting away from CAS, but we have to approach it with a full understanding of the issues and considering all perspectives jointly,” says the source.
Another issue that the IBF agreed upon is that six months is to short a time to get addressable boxes into enough Indian homes as hardly any boxes are available in the market. Additionally, the IBF concluded that a focused communications strategy on the CAS issue has to be drawn up, something the IBF is believed to be working on.
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.
