News Broadcasting
News presenter Shireen looks to offer consultancy services
MUMBAI: Realising that the mushrooming of television news channels also means an opportunity to offer consultancy services, former Sahara and NDTV news presenter Shireen has decided to go full-time into business through her company Network 1.
A bi-lingual anchor, Shireen was tipped to join Television Eighteen for its Hindi channel, CNBC Awaaz, but decided against it in favour freelance work. Presently, she is busy doing some projects for Zee Business, including anchoring a show called Share Bazaar Live.
Set up a few years ago, Network 1 is designed to service the demands of TV networks that range from training personnel to presenting an analytical viewpoint to a channel’s performance. The company is also in talks with
media clients in South East Asia and the Middle East for TV-related projects, though Shireen refuses to divulge any details.
Pointing out that at Sahara too her association was to manage a project after having built it from scratch, along with others like Arup Ghosh (now with Jagran TV), Shireen said that her three years there had been
a “great learning experience”, but she needed a break from the monotony too.
Shireen, along with Ghosh and few people from the technical team, quit the Sahara Samay family last year. She was also designated to head a channel from the sahara stable for the Sahara Samay NCR , which is still in the making.
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: 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.
