News Broadcasting
Prasar Bharati to bring back 80’s popular mythological epics
MUMBAI: At one time, India’s streets used to empty out when two particular programmes came on air, just like the roads are deserted today in the age of the novel coronavirus. We are referring to the two epic dramas that used to be telecast on Doordarshan in the eighties – Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and BR Chopra’s Mahabharat.
Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekar Vempati is hoping to bring them back on Doordarshan.
He announced on twitter that he is in conversation with the rights owners – BR Films and Sagar Arts to acquire the rights for the telecast. “Will update shortly. Stay tuned,” Shashi had tweeted.
Then he shared another tweet a short while later: “Hopeful of sharing schedule by the end of the day. Technical and logistics issues being worked out.”
Putting the shows on air could work well for Doordarshan, especially as a large part of India is at home with little to do. Work from home is not yielding too many results, courtesy the country lockdown announced by prime minister Narendra Modi.
The question is whether more aware and discerning audiences will take well to the production values that the two shows have, in the age of high-end VFX. “What the two shows had were a lot of heart, a good caste and fabulous storytelling on a channel which was the only one viewers could watch at that time,” says a veteran TV producer. “Hence, the two shows rated extremely high. In today’s environment where near-realistic VFX has come to epic dramas from the likes of Siddharth Kumar Tewary’s Mahabharat or Krishna shows on Star, modern audiences may shy away from them. However, only time will tell how audiences will react.”
To DD’s advantage, its channels are available freely on DD FreeDish which has become an alternative to those viewers in private pay TV dark areas, on account of pricing and packaging restrictions imposed on private broadcasters by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India under its new tariff order.
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.
