News Broadcasting
Sanju Saha quits Star News, to join Pepsi India
NEW DELHI: Sanju Saha, executive vice president, human resources at Star News, has put in his papers and is slated to join Pepsi in a much higher capacity.
Industry sources said that Saha, just 37, is joining as executive vice president, human resources of the Rs 70 billion Pepsi India group, a high profile job that functionally is director, HR.
Reluctant to comment on the development, Saha did tell indiantelevision.com: “I can say that I am as of date EVP HR, Star News, but I am leaving the group, that is confirmed.”
Sources who know him say that Saha was looking for a higher profile, which Pepsi has now offered him. And though no one is putting a date to either his finally leaving Star or joining the F&B global major, sources said he is joining Pepsi in the first week of February.
Saha had been working with Star News for the past two years and was responsible for streamlining the HR department and making it market oriented, getting the right people and generally “ruddering the ship in an industry that has seen so much turmoil”, a Star insider says.
Saha has previously worked with Aaj Tak, thus having worked in senior capacities in both the top Hindi news channels of the country.
“I come from a banking background, having worked with American Express before joining the media, Aaj Tak,” Saha said.
Before AmEx, he had worked with Britannia and Vazir Sultan, the Hyderabad based tobacco manufacturer.
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.
