News Broadcasting
PIB’s Manish Desai becomes interim CEO CBFC
MUMBAI: The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) is soon to see a change of face. 20 September was outgoing CEO Pankaja Thakur’s last day in office. PIB Mumbai Director Manish Desai has been roped in to oversee the board till the time a new CEO is appointed. He has taken charge of the CBFC from today.
Manish Desai
The government had issued notice in national newspapers calling candidates to apply for the post. Once the due process of going through the applications and interviews is completed, the ministry of information and broadcasting will approve the successor to Thakur which could take some time. Till then, Desai will hold additional charge as CEO while continuing with his responsibility as director of PIB (Mumbai). He, however, is not one of the applicants for the post.
Talking about the dual post, Desai says: “Since the two offices are not far off I will try to do justice to both by managing my time.”
Thakur took charge of a post that had been kept vacant for nearly ten years in 2010. Before that it was the chairpersons who overlooked the CBFC. Thakur has faced severe criticism from the film fraternity for her decisions but has also received support from certain parts of the industry. Leela Samson is the current chairperson of the CBFC.
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.
