News Broadcasting
News Corp raises bid to acquire Aussie property portal
MUMBAI: In a calculated move to secure another foothold in booming online classifieds advertising market, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has hiked its offer for the Australian property portal realestate.com.au to A$2.50 a share from A$2.00 a share.
The media conglomerate now values realestate.com.au at approximately A$269 million.
News Ltd. currently holds a 43.7 per cent stake in Melbourne-based portal. News Corp. had launched the bid early August but only to be rejected by realestate.com.au directors. Then, their argument was that the bid undervalued its shares.
Murdoch had made his intentions clear on the internet side of the media business by acquiring the social network MySpace.com for $580 million in June this year. News Corp’s UK satellite operator BSkyB is now close to buying high-speed internet provider Easynet. BSkyB is looking to invest in Easynet to bolster the ways in which consumers can access its content. It plans to raise about ?1bn with a bond issue, ploughing some of the proceeds into acquisitions.
Other key media players pursuing online growth strategies include John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. and Kerry Packer’s Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd. Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd recently agreed to combine its online trader business with online car classifieds group carsales.com.au while Fairfax bought online dating venture rsvp.com.au for A$40 million this year.
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.
