News Broadcasting
`Red Alert’ completes a century; special show on 6 Aug
MUMBAI: Star News’ crime show Red Alert will air a special episode on 6 August to on the occasion of completion of 100 episodes.
The show, which launched 2 August 2003, is presently hosted by Jitendra Dixit.
The weekend show, airing at 11:30 pm notched up a 214 per cent viewership growth post-launch in August 2003 in the late night time slot.
In a statement today issued, Star News said Red Alert is the “original, path-breaking crime special that spurred the current spate of crime programs across news channels.”
However, while these programs might look similar, they quite haven’t been able to match the flavour or the unique character of this original “favourite,” the statement claimed.
Episodes featuring Maninder Pal Singh, wanted in the rape and murder of British student Hannah Foster, Star News said got positive repsonse from viewers as the xcrime programme sensitised people to such heinous acts.
A spokesperson for Star News said, “Red Alert was an attempt to break the mould and involve the viewer in the crime-fighting process. More importantly, the crimes and scandals exposed and criminals nabbed as a result of Red Alert’s unrelenting focus on exposing crime draw up as medals of recognition in our mission to build a better society.”
Some of the exposes by Red Alert include a first time sting operation post-Tehelka that delved into the involvement of glamorous Bollywood actresses and models in a high profile prostitution racket.
The show also, during its 100-episode journey, highlighted a medieval exploitation of women through Arab tourists seeking quickly dissolvable contract marriages in the back alleys of Hyderabad for short bursts of pleasure.
An episode on Baby killer Darbara Singh featured an exclusive story by Star News on the kidnapping, raping and killing of scores of innocent children in Jalandhar. The story was brought into focus by Red Alert, resulting in the pedophile’s subsequent arrest.
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.
