News Broadcasting
Media icon & film producer Pradeep Guha no more
Mumbai: Media and entertainment industry veteran Pradeep Guha has passed away on Saturday. He was in his late 60s.
Guha was battling advanced liver cancer and was admitted at Kokilaben Ambani Hospital in Mumbai. He is survived by his wife Papia and son Sanket.
Guha was the managing director at 9X Media. Previously, he was chief executive officer at ZEE Telefilms. He was also associated with Times of India for nearly three decades. He produced the Bollywood film ‘Fiza’.
Many veterans of the M&E industry paid tribute to Guha on social media.
“Brevity, clarity, speed characterised Pradeep Guha. Like his simple signature, that was but a tick mark, as if it meant ‘just go ahead and do it’. Aim high, set quality standards, inspire the team and just do it was the simple strategy he employed. The legendary media man who put India on the Global Media map in many ways is no more,” said Times Network, managing director and chief executive officer, MK Anand.
“His professional achievements are multifarious – dominance in print media, advertising excellence, beauty queens, mega format ground events, the list goes on. He was one of the earliest of the current generation of high flyers who burst on to the Indian corporate landscape in the late 80’s and blazed through the 90’s. The young turk who kept rising,” he added.
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.
