News Broadcasting
Nielsen to include DVR viewing in TV ratings in the US
MUMBAI: Nielsen Media Research in the US has announced that it wll make three streams of television ratings available to the industry from January 2006.
They are:
Live Ratings – Those who view programmes at the time they initially are aired, excluding any DVR playback.
Live+Same Day (SD) Ratings – Viewers watching live, as well as those who played back programmes on a DVR on the same day of the initial airing.
Live+7 Day Ratings – Viewers watching live, as well as those who played back programs on a DVR within a week of the initial airing.
Nielsen’s GM national services Sara Erichson says, “Nielsen is keeping pace with the evolving ways that people watch television, thereby ensuring that our ratings continue to be accurate and reliable. The introduction of audience estimates for DVR is a major milestone in ratings history and will provide the most detailed information ever on how and when people watch television.”
The first weekly programme rankings with timeshifted viewing included will be available to the media on 6 January, 2006 through Nielsen’s online press room. The traditional season-to-date estimates will be based on a combination of Live+SD viewing for the current two weeks and Live+7 viewing for all weeks prior.
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.
