News Broadcasting
Rajdeep Sardesai joins India Today Group as consulting editor
MUMBAI: After a hiatus of three months, former editor-in-chief of IBN18, Rajdeep Sardesai has decided to move to India Today Group as consulting editor.
Indiantelevision.com was the first to report that he would be looking at joining TV Today in August.
Sardesai announced his new assignment via a tweet “Delighted to be joining TV Today network, India’s largest news network, as consulting editor. Looking forward to working with a great team.” He will be contributing to the revamp of the channel and its alignment with digital assets of the group.
At first, he will be doing a prime time show on its English channel Headlines Today. On his appointment, India Today Group chairman and editor-in-chief Aroon Purie said, “Rajdeep has been an asset to whichever team he has belonged to, including the cricketing ones. Great to have him with us. I know he will hit the ball out of the park for team India Today.”
Recently, the network saw Shekhar Gupta move out of his full time role into a consulting position. The network also saw Karan Thapar and Boria Majumdar join earlier this year.
Sardesai has worked with NDTV and CNN-IBN. Prior to this, he was working with Times of India in Mumbai. Recently, he just concluded writing a book on Indian elections while simultaneously launching his own website ‘Breaking Views’.
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.
