News Broadcasting
New Skies signs EBU deal for transmission services
NETHERLANDS: New Skies Satellites the global satellite communications company, has announced a long-term agreement with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for value-added television contribution services over the new NSS-7 Atlantic Ocean Region satellite.
New Skies will enable the EBU, a group of 119 broadcasters from 79 countries, to digitally deliver contribution feeds from sporting and special events as well as breaking news stories in the United States to its member stations across Europe. In particular, it will link seamlessly EBU’s Washington bureau to the Eurovision users’ earth stations in Europe.
The service for the EBU will take advantage of the NSS-7 satellite and New Skies’ Washington D.C. Mediaport. The EBU will co-locate digital transmission equipment in the recently enhanced facility, which also features an ultra-high speed OC-12 fiber link (622 Mbps) direct to a major Washington D.C. metro video hub, connecting all local access providers in the area. The EBU will route its digital video traffic through this connection to the Mediaport for uplink to the NSS-7 satellite and broadcast to points across Europe and the Middle East. The service will begin during the fourth quarter of this year.
NSS-7 was launched on 16 April, 2002 from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana and commenced commercial services on May 30, 2002. The satellite replaced both NSS-803 and NSS-K at 338.5 degrees east, combining the extensive television transmissions and Internet traffic from the two satellites to debut as a premier video and IP neighborhood in the Atlantic Ocean region. NSS-7, a Lockheed Martin A2100AX model spacecraft, boasts 36 C-band and 36 Ku-band transponders and eleven high-powered coverage beams. The satellite is capable of broadcasting video, Internet and data traffic throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. With a blue-chip full-time customer lineup and occasional-use transmissions of breaking world news as well as prominent sporting events, NSS-7 broadcasts to thousands of antennas across its vast footprint.
Founded in 1950, the European Broadcasting Union is the largest professional association of national broadcasters in the world with 70 members and associate members in 51 countries of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and 49 associate members in 29 countries further afield.
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.
