News Broadcasting
New weekday programme at BBC World News
One of the Beeb’s best known faces, George Alagiah has joined BBC World to present a new weekday news programme that has started airing from 22 January at 1.30 am IST. The new format news programme will draw on the BBC’s newsgathering operation and will reflect the global stories of the day with a blend of high profile interviews and in depth interviews.
BBC World, that claims audience figures of 192 million households in 200 countries, will air the Alagiah specials from Tuesdays to Saturdays. Alagiah has been working with the broadcaster since 1989 and has actively been involved in reporting from Africa and other developing countries. He was part of the BBC team which collected a BAFTA award for covering the Kosovo conflict in 2000. George Alagiah has reported on a wide range oif important occurences. They include human organs trade in India, civil war and famine in Somalia, genocide in Rwanda, farm invasions in Zimbabwe and the Kosovan refugee crisis. He has also interviewed Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela. Between 1994-1998 he was based in Johannesburg as the broadcasters Africa correspondent. His book ‘A Passage To Africa’ was published last year.
Kirsty Lang another new face on BBC World will be the second presenter of the bulletin. She has worked as BBC News Paris Correspondent and as a reporter for Channel Four.
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.
