News Broadcasting
Sarah Hayes is new head of BBC archives
LONDON : The BBC has announced the appointment of former Globecast executive Sarah Hayes as Head of Media Asset Management. She will be responsible for managing the BBC’s Information & Archives department.
An official release informs that Hayes is taking on responsibility for the largest broadcasting and entertainment archive in the world. This consists of thousands of hours of radio and television output stretching back over 75 years of the beebs history.
She has a broader role than previous heads of the archive, taking on responsibility for increasing the accessibility of the archive to both the BBC and the wider broadcasting industry. As part of that she will be leading a drive to extend the use of new technology in the Information & Archive department’s work, based on digital production.
Hayes said, “It’s a very exciting challenge to be taking probably the world’s greatest television and radio archive into the 21st century, using the latest technology to both preserve it and make it more accessible to our many customers.”
Hayes joins the BBC from GlobeCast Northern Europe, where she was the chief executive. Globecast is a global communications provider for local, regional and worldwide customers, broadcasting via satellite. The company specialises in the uplink, distribution and management of audio, video and data signals to the broadcast and corporate market. Hayes will report to the BBC’s director of rights and business, Sara Geater.
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.
