News Broadcasting
NDTV Metro Nation Chennai to launch by mid-year
NEW DELHI: After the three new channels being announced to be launched from NDTV Networks, the company’s expansion plan now takes its Metro Nation channel down south.
Sources told indiantelevision.com that NDTV’s internal memos have told staffers that the process of launching the new channel is on the countdown mode, and that Metro Nation will be launched in Chennai soon, expectedly middle of this year.
A top official from the PCR at Metro Nation (Delhi) is being sent to Chennai in the middle of February to start recruitments for setting up a full team, as well as creating the infrastructure, sources said.
The next step would be to start the Metro Nation from Bangalore, Hyderabad and Kolkata, which would be early next year, if plans work out well with the Chennai edition.
Though NDTV is keen on the new content of music and Hollywood films, the expansion would be faster in the Metro Nation channels, sources said, as the company’s internal assessment finds its Delhi reception very encouraging.
The distribution office has reportedly received very favourable response from the Delhi cable mandarins, where the niche, city-based channel was launched last year.
More than 60 per cent cable networks in Delhi have started streaming NDTV Metro Nation, the internal assessment note says.
There is a minor issue with the DTH platform, as at the moment, NDTV Metro Nation is seen on the backburner channels of TataSky.
Sources said that the “hard launch” on TataSky’s premier bands will follow from the middle of next month.
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.
