News Broadcasting
Mumbai MSOs join Delhi colleagues in 1-hour blackout, plan indefinite stir from 24 July
MUMBAI:There was no prime time in Mumbai tonight. All across the city from 9 pm onwards, cable feeds went blank for an hour.
This followed a meeting by all MSOs in Mumbai this afternoon to deliberate on the delay in the implementation of CAS. At the meeting it was decided that the cable fraternity would join forces with their counterparts in Delhi and observe a one-hour blackout tonight to draw attention to the issue. The meeting decided that cable operators will black out television screens from 9 to 10 pm tonight.
If no decision is taken by the government on the issue tomorrow, the cable ops will resort to an indefinite blackout from 12 am on 24 July. The decision has been taken unanimously and will be supported by distributors owing allegiance to all MSOs in the city. In the capital, MSOs have adopted a similar strategy since last Friday, resorting to an hour long blackout every day to protest the delay in the implementation of CAS.
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.
