News Broadcasting
Scientific-Atlanta wins another round in patent rights battle with Gemstar
ATLANTA (Georgia): Cable television set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta announced on Monday that it won another round in its legal battle with the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. over patented innovations related to television on-screen programming guides.
The latest judgment by a Georgia federal court ruled that Scientific-Atlanta’s Explorer(r) 3000 and 8600x set-top boxes did not infringe any claims of US patent numbers 5,508,815 and 5,568,272. The Court had previously ruled in favor of Scientific-Atlanta regarding the same two patents and Scientific-Atlanta’s Explorer 2000 set-tops. There are additional Gemstar and Scientific-Atlanta patents at issue in the Georgia court.
Gemstar said last week it would restate 2 1/2 years of financial results, including removing $113 million it booked as revenue in anticipation of winning the dispute with Scientific-Atlanta. The US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the company’s accounting.
Gemstar CEO Henry Yuen resigned last month after an accounting review by the board’s audit committee, and last week the company fired its accounting firm, KPMG LLP.
Gemstar holds more than 190 patents for the software used to run menus that help TV viewers pick shows, and it has sued customers and rivals to enforce the rights. As satellite and digital cable have expanded viewers’ choices to hundreds of channels, on-screen program guides have become more important to consumers.
News Corp. owns a 42 percent stake in Gemstar, which earns more from its TV Guide magazine than it does from on-screen listings.
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.
