News Broadcasting
Scot Safon to lead CNN Marketing and Promotion
Scot M. Safon is joining the CNN News Group as senior V-P of marketing. The announcment was made by president and COO of the CNN News Group Jim Walton. Safon will be responsible for the marketing and promotion of the 34 CNN News Group networks and services. He will remain based in Atlanta and report to Walton. He is scheduled to begin with CNN next month.
Safon comes to CNN from Turner Network Television (TNT) where he served as senior VP of marketing since 1996. In this capacity, he was responsible for all marketing efforts on behalf of TNT, including network branding, consumer and trade advertising and the marketing and promotion of individual programming events, series and franchises.
Walton said: “Scot’s broad experience, exceptional creativity and leadership skills as well as his demonstrated commitment to excellence will boost the marketing and promotion activity of the News Group to a new level.”
Safon joined TNT in December 1991 as director of advertising. He has supervised the development of campaigns on behalf of some of the most-watched and most-honored original films in cable history, including George Wallace, Nuremberg, Pirates of Silicon Valley.
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.
