News Broadcasting
NDTV, Business Today correspondents get CNN awards
NEW DELHI: NDTV correspondent Sidharth Pandey and Business Today senior correspondent Kushan Mitra have won the first CNN Young Journalists Award-India (CNN-YJA) in the TV and print/online categories respectively.
Aaj Tak principal correspondent and news anchor Rahul Kanwal and zeenews.com copywriter Shruti Gupta have been named the runners up in the categories.
The CNN awards was announced last evening at a function held in Delhi.
Pandey and Mitra will now get to spend two weeks at CNN’s headquarters in Atlanta and runners up, Kanwal and Gupta will be sent to work closely with CNN’s New Delhi Bureau.
They will undergo an intense schedule at the headquarters, which will add value to their existing journalistic experience. The winners will also meet with CNN International’s editors and anchors, and experience first-hand the workings of the news agency’s editorial and programming teams.
Siddhinath Vishwakarma, assistant producer of Sahara Samay (on the foreign desk) also received a consolation prize in the TV category.
The awards look forward to recognise and encourage quality journalism among young media professionals in India.
How, when, why
CNN-YJA came to India in August 2003. Entries were open to all young news journalists (print or television), between 22 and 26 years of age.
Contestants in the television category were required to create a 2:30 minute news feature style TV package based on the standards for CNN’s programme World Report. Contestants for the print/online category were asked to submit their best by-lined stories, published between 1 January and 30 September 2003.
A panel of judges comprising distinguished television and print journalists selected the winners. The jury members included K Kunhikrishnan of Doordarshan; Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, director of School of Convergence; Professor B P Sanjay, director of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) in New Delhi; Karan Thapar, president of Infotainment Television; and Satinder Bindra, CNN New Delhi Bureau Chief.
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.
