News Broadcasting
News18 Bangla’s multimedia campaign solidifies leadership in Bengali news segment
Mumbai: News18 Bangla has launched a 360-degree ad campaign to highlight its dominance in the Bengali news segment. As part of the campaign, a full-page front jacket ad was released in all editions of Bartaman Newspaper on February 12. The bold and striking ad displayed the channel’s remarkable performance and a 27.8 per cent lead over ABP Ananda. (Source: BARC, Weekly Cume Reach 000, Week 4’24, All India, TG 15+) All Day
The multimedia campaign includes several out-of-home ads strategically placed in Kolkata’s popular locations such as Park Street, Shyambazar Crossing, Ruby, Howrah and Sealdah stations, Dakshineswar Temple vicinity, Maa Flyover and Alipore Zoo, among others. The campaign has also been amplified across trade media platforms and promoted through branding placements in Kolkata’s popular movie theatres.
News18 Bangla’s dominance in Bengali news has been further underscored by its achievement in the digital space. According to the digital viewership data by Comscore, bengali.news18.com has received 4.39 million unique visitors in the month of December ’23, leaving behind competitors like Anandabazaar.com at 4.37 million, and ABP Live Bengali at 3.74 million unique visitors. (Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Unique Visitors (Mn). Custom-defined list of Bengali News/Information Publishers, Dec- 2023, India)
According to Crowdtangle and SocialBlade, News18 Bangla has garnered the highest combined views on Facebook and YouTube. With a viewership of 235 million, the channel outperformed ABP Ananda, which achieved 205 million views, and R Bangla, which recorded 139 million views. (Source – Crowdtangle and SocialBlade)
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.
