News Broadcasting
News Corp, DirecTV hit by $1 billion fraud lawsuit
MUMBAI: Darlene Investments a minority shareholder in DirecTV Latin America has filed a lawsuit against the Rupert Murdoch owned News Corporation, The DirecTV Group and their affiliates.
The suit is looking to block the restructuring of DirecTV Latin America. The companies are being sued for fraud and violation of fiduciary, contractual and other duties in connection with recently announced transactions in Latin America..
The suit alleges that the restructuring will improperly benefit DirecTV and threaten DirecTV Latin America’s prospects and viability. Last year News Corp had taken a 34 per cent stake in DirecTV through its subsidiary The Fox Entertainment Group.
A few days ago News Corp and DirecTV had announced plans to reorganise and consolidate TV platforms in Latin America. The lawsuit is seeking more than $1 billion in damages for fraud committed by News Corp and DirecTV prior to the transactions.
Darlene has a 14 per cent stake in DirecTV’s Latin American operations. It alleges that transactions with Sky, a DirecTV competitor, were the result of a gross undervaluation of the DirecTV’s Latin American assets and fraudulent statements from News Corp.
The suit alleges that the arrangement breached noncompete agreements between competitors, and that News Corp. never intended to help DirecTV’s Latin American operations. Rather, to get out of the noncompete violation, News Corp. planned to “dismantle” DirecTV, the suit claims..
The suit charges that News Corp. and DirecTV purposely misled the US Bankruptcy Court and Darlene with respect to their future commitment to the success of DirecTV Latin America. DirecTV had presented the Sky transactions to the DirecTV Board of Directors Audit Committee in January 2004 –before DirecTV Latin America’s emergence from bankruptcy. However Darlene claims that this fact was concealed. The suit alleges that while News Corp’s current subsidiaries were saying that they would grow and enhance DirecTV Latin America, News Corp and DirecTV knew that the exact opposite was true.
The suit asserts that in fact the parties were planning a transaction designed to deliver vast benefits to News Corp and its partners while inflicting critical harm to DirecTV Latin America and Darlene.
As per the proposed restructuring plans of DirecTV Latin America one of the things that will happen is the merger of Sky Brasil with DirecTV Brasil as per an agreement between News Corp, DirecTV and Globo. This will see DirecTV Brasil customers migrating to Sky Brasil. The DirecTV Group would acquire the interests of News Corp. and Liberty Media in Sky Brasil.
Meanwhile DirecTV’s affiliate Galaxy Mexico will close its operations and sell its subscriber list to Sky Mexico. DirecTV customers in Mexico will be offered the opportunity to migrate to Sky Mexico. The DirecTV Group will acquire the interest of News Corp and jointly with Televisa, the interest of Liberty Media in Sky Mexico.
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.
