News Broadcasting
Santosh Nair joins UTV as VP syndication & sales
MUMBAI: UTV sure is beefing up its sales team. While Radio City’s Rajesh Chakrabarti has joined the production house as national ad sales head; New Age Media’s vice president marketing Santosh Nair has joined in as vice president syndication and sales to strengthen UTV’s presence in the southern market.
Nair, who was with New Age Media for four years, put in his papers at the company a month back and joined UTV as of today (1 June). New Age Media is an airtime marketing sales company primarily doing business on the Sun Network channels. The company was appointed as the marketing partner for Sun TV’s game show Koteeswaran.
As far as the business development portfolio is concerned, Nair will report directly to UTV CEO Ronnie Screwvala and for sales, he will report to the newly appointed national ad sales head Chakrabarti.
Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Nair said that his mandate will be to make UTV a strong player in the South. UTV has just launched a new daily show on Gemini TV called Gee Boomba. The production house has had a decade long relationship with Sun TV, being one of the largest airtime sales partners for Sun and its producers in the South.
Prior to joining New Age Media, Nair was with Nimbus for five years as senior marketing manager.
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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.
