News Broadcasting
MIB gives an extension to broadcasters on TV rating committee’s report
Mumbai: The ministry of information and broadcasting (MIB) has granted an extension on the deadline seeking comments from broadcasters on the report on ‘Guidelines for TV Rating Agencies in India’ till 30 November.
Major broadcasting associations including the Indian Broadcasting and Digital Foundation (IBDF), News Broadcasters Association (NBA), and News Broadcasters Federation (NBF) have received the report.
The MIB had reached out to broadcasters earlier in the month seeking their comments by 17 November on the report. The report was submitted by a committee instituted by MIB on 4 November 2020 and led by Prasar Bharati chief executive officer Shashi Shekhar Vempati. The committee submitted its 39-page report in January.
Govt committee seeks to set up a specialised regulator for media ratings in India
The comprehensive report highlights 20 recommendations of the committee to restore faith in the integrity of the TV rating system in India. The committee was formed in response to the TRP scam that broke out in October last year where three TV channels were named by Mumbai Police for allegedly tampering with rating data.
As reported previously by Indiantelevision.com, the recommendations made by the committee in their report were aimed towards strengthening corporate governance at Broadcast Audience Research Council (Barc) India which is the premier TV audience measurement company in the country. There were also recommendations pertaining to the technical aspects of the TV measurement system like the use of return-path data (RPD), instituting a regulatory mechanism for media rating agencies, adopting an open data ecosystem, and moving towards hybrid audience measurement.
The four-member committee included IIT Kanpur professor of the statistics department of mathematics and statistics Dr Shalabh, C-DOT executive director Dr Rajkumar Upadhyay and Decision Sciences Centre for Public Policy professor Pulak Ghosh.
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: 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.
