News Broadcasting
Raju Santhanam is Zee News editor
MUMBAI: Zee News Ltd has named Raju Santhanam as Zee News editor. Santhanam has been appointed in place of Alka Saxena, who recently put in her papers.
Santhanam’s appointment is with immediate effect. Santhanam has been associated with the Delhi edition of The Statesman as editor and also had a stint at Zee News in 2001, the same year the channel expanded its editorial team.
It was in 2001 that Sanjay Pugalia had joined the team as executive director in charge of programming on Zee News Channel and Alka Saxena as deputy editor (output). At the time Santhanam was appointed editor — special projects.
Santhanam was one of the directors of the 45-minute documentary on Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, which was showcased on Zee News.
Alka Saxena is currently hosting a chat show on Janmat, the views channel promoted by the Adhikari brothers, which launched on 6 November.
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.
