News Broadcasting
NDS dismisses Echostar lawsuit claims as baseless
LONDON: The litigation between News Corp’s NDS and Canal Plus may have been resolved earlier this year but Rupert Murdoch still has a fight on his hands.
A Bloomberg report states that last week EchoStar Communications, which is the second-largest US satellite-television provider, sued News Corp’s NDS Group.
EchoStar claims that NDS employees hacked into its systems and illegally deciphered coding for the “smart cards” that give customers access to programming. Like the above mentioned Canal Plus suit, this one also accuses NDS of indulging in conspiracy, misappropriation of trade secrets and racketeering. The extent of the allegations could allow a court to triple any damages that Echostar is seeking.
NDS has countered by describing the allegations as baseless and nothing more than an attempt by a competitor to cause harm. NDS has noted the repetition in the suit adding that if Echostar had a solid foundation on which to build the case, it would have brought up the matter earlier.
There could be a reason for Echostar’s delay in filing a suit. Ever since September 2002, EchoStar had been looking to join the fight against NDS by joining the Canal Plus lawsuit. However, when the dispute came to a close with Murdoch’s acquisition of Vivendi’s Italian pay TV unit Telepiu, Echostar decided to file a suit of its own.
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.
