News Broadcasting
Sahara builds up primetime fare around ‘Har Mod Par’
MUMBAI: Take a successful show and build programming around it. That is the strategy that Sahara TV appears to be adopting. The show in this case is Har Mod Par, which has made a mark for itself in the 8:00 pm slot. Har Mod Par works as the lead-in for Sahara’s new family soap that launched yesterday in the 8:30 pm plot – Virasat.
With Virasat, it makes four new shows that Sahara has launched in the span of three months between 7 and 9:30 pm, all dailies or at least tri-weeklies.
Chacha Chaudhary aimed at kids followed by Shubh Mangal Savadhan a sitcom,then the established Har Mod Par followed by the just launched Virasat, after which comes Parchaiyan – a suspense drama – at 9:00 pm tries to tighten the grip, the aim it seems is to provide the viewers with a wholesome package.
“Along with some new weeklies, the introduction of a fresh bunch of dailies was aimed at satisfying the audience’s need for dailies that have an edge as far as building viewership around a specific time slot is concerned,” says Priya Raj, V-P publicity & promotions, Sahara TV, explaining the thinking behind the new launches.
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.
