News Broadcasting
News Corp appoints Mark Williams as CFO Europe and Asia
MUMBAI: Mark Williams is joining Newscorp as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Europe and Asia. He will be reporting directly to the company’s head of Asian and European operations James Murdoch.
Coming in from Sky Italia, where he is the chief operating officer (COO), Williams will be based in London but will remain as a non-executive director on the board of Sky Italia.
Williams replaces Stephen Daintith at News Corp. Daintith is moving to Dow Jones as CFO.
Williams will take over Daintith’s duties as CFO of News International as well as acting as CFO across News Corp’s operations in Europe and Asia supporting Star TV, Sky Italia and News Corp Europe.
Murdoch said, “I am delighted that Mark Williams will be joining us in London. He has been a key player in the team which has taken Sky Italia from strength to strength, and I look forward to working with him in this new wider role.”
Williams said, “I’m extremely excited to be taking on this new position working for James across the breadth of News Corp activities throughout Europe and Asia, ranging from operations in Eastern Europe to the already very successful UK newspaper business. At the same time, I am very proud of the team at Sky Italia and look forward to remaining involved as a member of the board.”
Mark Williams joined News Corp in 1996 as CFO of the Australian pay-TV operation Foxtel. In 2000, he assumed the responsibility of CFO for News Corp’s newspaper and other interests throughout Australia and New Zealand. In January 2003, he was appointed COO of Sky Italia, based in Milan.
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.
