News Broadcasting
MMPL in talks to sell Kolkata assets for Rs 40 crore
KOLKATA: Mahuaa Media Private Limited (MMPL), which closed two regional channels namely Mahuaa Bangla, (a Bengali general entertainment channel) and Mahua Khabor, (a 24-hour Bengali news channel) last year in Kolkata, is in talks with investors to sell off its assets.
Industry insiders on the condition of anonymity told indiantelevision on Thursday: “A party has negotiated a deal with Mahuaa Media which is around Rs 35 crore-Rs 40 crore. The assets mainly include big studio and equipments and camera.”
“People those who were appointed for Kolkata bureau and operations are no more associated with the company. The discussions are on with the top honchos of the company only,” he said hinting that the chairman and managing director of MMPL PK Tewari might be negotiating the deal with the prospective buyers.
Tewari and Mahuaa Bangla chief executive officer, Yuvaraj Bhattacharya and other senior journalists who were roped in for Kolkata operations could not be contacted.
In the beginning of the year 2012, Mahuaa Bangla shut its operations in Kolkata. Insiders added that the company has not yet paid the public relations agency the retainership fee which amounted to Rs one lakh a month.
Unlike other general entertainment channels, Mahua Bangla offered a wide variety of programmes, including popular shows like Kaun Banega Crorepati, a Kolkata based media manager said.
A regional media employee remembers that Mahuaa Bangla started with a bang and the slogan of the channel was Jomiye Din Saradin. It created history by starting as a sports reality show. “It started a reality show titled The Match. The main attraction was the inclusion of Brazilian football players Branco and Romario in the show,” he recounts.
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.
