News Broadcasting
Sat projects tax holiday stays; duties down on OFCs
MUMBAI: Tax holiday benefits for satellite and telecom projects will continue. Cable companies have also received reliefs in customs and import duties.
In a move that may benefit projects like Subhash Chandra’s Essel Group’s Agrani, which are currently in the pipeline, the finance minister has extended the benefit for one more year till 31 March 2004, saying that it is “well understood that such projects do take a considerable time to get completed.”
Customs duty on optical fibre cable has been brought down from 25 per cent to 20 per cent. Import duty on raw materials for the manufacture of optical fibre has been brought down from 30 per cent to 15 per cent.
Capital equipment customs duty in Telecom and IT is down from 25 to 15 per cent. IT companies to continue enjoying Sec 10A and 10B tax sops under the Income Tax Act. The sops have been extended to include mergers and acquisitions which was not there earlier. This means providing incentives for M&As.
Domestic companies will now have to pay 12.5 per cent dividend tax, but the same has been abolished in the hands of the investors.
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.
