News Broadcasting
News channels lobby to get ICC nod for World Cup coverage
NEW DELHI: Even as television news channels heaved a sigh of relief over the decision of the International Cricket Council to allow coverage of the Cricket World Cup final between India and Sri Lanka in Mumbai tomorrow, it was felt that the cricket body was not justified in threatening legal action against what it termed offending channels.
ICC President Sharad Pawar had this evening agreed to lift the bar on news coverage of the World Cup bowing to national outrage, but ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat said legal action would be considered against offending Indian news channels which have repeatedly breached the News Access Guidelines for Broadcasters for the World Cup.
It is learnt that Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni’s plea to her cabinet colleague and ICC President Sharad Pawar also played a role in the final decision.
A news channel executive on condition of anonymity said the tangle on which talks broke down between the ICC on the one hand and the News Broadcasters Association and the Broadcast Editors Association on the other was a very minor issue which was not in the hands of the news channels since the score boards were not put up at the instance of the news channels.
Earlier, the news channels were allowed to cover the world cup semi-final between India and Pakistan after ICC lifted the ban on accredited journalists from the news channels for a day following intervention by Soni.
The BEA had said earlier today that the decision of ICC to withdraw the accreditation of journalists covering Cricket World Cup matches is not only against this interest but also in contravention of the rights of the citizens to be informed. “We tried our best to make the ICC understand this but the recalcitrant attitude of the latter rendered our efforts sterile in the past three days,” BEA said.
Meanwhile, it is learnt that the I&B Ministry feels that the dispute – which centres around display of scoreboards with sponsor logos by the news channels – is a very minor issue and should not hold up coverage of the final tomorrow as both President Pratibha Devisingh Patil and Sri Lankan President Mahindra Rajapaksa are expected to be present.
Ministry sources say that the “the ball is in Sharad Pawar’s court” and he has to take a decision.
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.
