News Broadcasting
Sahara calls off deal to acquire stake in Adlabs
MUMBAI: Sahara Media and Entertainment has called off the deal to acquire a substantial minority stake in Adlabs Films’ wholly owned subsidiary Entertainment One.
“We have not gone ahead with the deal. We called it off last week,” says a senior official in Sahara.
Adlabs chairman and managing director Manmohan Shetty also confirmed that the deal was off. “We had offered a 25 per cent stake in Entertainment One for a specific amount. We were supposed to sign but there has been no response from Sahara,” he says. He declined to disclose the valuation of the deal.
Entertainment One has produced movies like Gangaajal. Sahara had evinced interest in the company as it wanted to tie up with various movie production houses.
The initial offer from Adlabs was for a 25 per cent stake in Entertainment One, says a senior official in Sahara. This was later revised to 33 per cent. “But we felt it did not make business sense for us and decided to call it off last week,” he adds.
The deal had run into rough weather after Entertainment One had part-funded 1857: The Rising, a mega movie project. Subrato Roy’s media conglomerate had disassociated itself from the project after noted actress and “Sahara council director” Aishwarya Rai was dropped from the film. Adlabs then agreed for a fresh valuation, as the proposed deal would exclude The Rising.
Entertainment One has two movies on the floors and has lined up three more. The average budget of each movie is Rs 7-8 crore (70-80 million),” says Shetty. The company plans to be involved in five movies a year.
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.
