News Broadcasting
Sangeet Natak Akademi awards on 6 July in Mumbai
MUMBAI: The president of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam will give away the Sangeet Natak Akademi fellowship awards 2003 on 6 July 2003 at a function organised in Mumbai’s Nehru Centre. The chief minister of Maharashtra and other top officials will also preside over the function. The Akademi has invited all the leading television news channels to cover the function and focus on the nominated 27 eminent artists who will receive 25 Akademi awards (including a joint award) this year.
The Sangeet Natak Akademi – the national academy for music, dance and drama – honours each year eminent practitioners of music, dance and drama and also those who serve arts with distinction.
The general council of the Sangeet Natak Akademi under the chairmanship of Dr. Bhupen Hazarika has elected Dr Shanno Khurana, eminent musician and scholar, and Kavalam Narayana Panikkar, eminent personality of theatre and performing arts traditions of Kerala as fellows of the Sangeet Natak Akademi.
“India’s precious heritage of music, drama and dance is something which we must cherish and develop. We must do so not only for our sake but as our contribution to the cultural heritage of mankind. Nowhere is it truer than in the field of art. We must all strive to sustain means to create traditions that cannot be preserved but can only be created afresh. It is the aim of the Akademi to preserve the traditions by offering an institutional form,” Dr Hazarika says.
The Sangeet Natak Akademi fellowship is restricted to 30 living artistes/scholars at any given point of time.
The Sangeet Natak Akademi awards have been conferred from 1952. They symbolise the highest standard of excellence and achievement on a national basis; recognise sustained individual work of high professional order and contribution to the practice and appreciation of these arts through performance ,teaching and scholarship.
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.
