News Broadcasting
‘Millionaire’ to end prime-time run in US 27 June
The Indian avatar of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Kaun Banega Crorepati, came, saw, conquered, and has gone into the history books as the show that redefined the dynamics of entertainment television in the country. KBC ended its run on Star Plus in January after providing the thrust that drove Star into pole position in the channel stakes.
Across the Atlantic, the US version of the Celador-licenced show is also set for its walk into the sunset. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire officially ends its just under three-year run on 27 June, ABC announced late on Monday.
To send it off, the network will reportedly air a 90-minute edition of the Regis Philbin-fronted gamer. After that, Millionaire will be revamped as an occasional series of specials, similar to how the programme debuted in 1999.
With the departure of Millionaire and NBC’s Weakest Link from this fall’s primetime schedules, the trend has now gone full circle: quiz-based game shows have once again been relegated to daytime, syndication and cable.
And that looks like a trend that is going to be replicated in India as well because the gameshow is increasingly looking to be a losing proposition.
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.
