News Broadcasting
NDTV to showcase Essar’s online lottery draws
MUMBAI: Looks like Prannoy Roy is taking a leaf out of Subhash Chandra’s book! Fortune, the recently launched online lottery brand in India has announced that it will telecast live the weekly draws of the Fortune Lotto on NDTV India, the Hindi news channel from Roy’s stable.
The online lottery brand Fortune, of Essar Teleholdings in association with Computer Aided Information and Research Services Private Limited (CAIRS) is the sole distributor and marketing agent for the online lottery organised and promoted by Nagaland.
The results of the inaugural Fortune Lotto game will be telecast on 24 May at 10 pm from a studio in Kohima, Nagaland by NDTV India throughout the country. The draw will be aired every Saturday at 10 pm on NDTV India to announce the weekly results of the Fortune Lotto game.
Six winning numbers for the week’s Fortune Lotto game, in addition to a bonus ball (named the Fortune Ball) will be picked through India’s only Venus Lotto drawing machine. The Venus Lotto machine has been specially imported by Fortune from Editec, Fortune’s technology partner.
Commenting on the choice of NDTV India as the channel for its draws, Essar Teleholdings Vikash Saraf CEO said: “Fortune and NDTV India start out on a common aim to be the best in their respective domains. The perfect match between our consumer profiles and NDTV India’s audience makes this an ideal platform to address our target audience. The reach and popularity of the channel will enable our players to find out the winning numbers, and with a prize structure that makes people more likely to win than any other lottery in India, that is an important service”.
CAIRS officially launched its online lottery with the launch of Fortune at Kohima, Nagaland in December. Fortune plans to roll out with over 10,000 terminals in the next 12 to 18 months with the channel profile including department and grocery stores, ice cream parlors, book stores, restaurants and entertainment centres among others.
Apart from increased footfalls in their establishments, which the Fortune brand campaign will drive, the retailers gain by way of lucrative volume increases, trade commission as well as an improved shop ambience, which will be created by the innovative Fortune branding.
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.
