News Broadcasting
SET India hopes to gross Rs 10 bn revenue
NEW DELHI: Sony Entertainment Television India – part of the Japanese conglomerate Sony group- has raked in Rs. 10,000 million worth of revenues this financial year ending March 31.
“Buoyed by cricket earnings, our gross revenue is expected to touch Rs. 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) when we close this financial year,” an optimistic
Kunal Dasgupta, chief executive of SET India, said today, pointing out that it is almost double the revenue as compared to last year.
Last financial year, SET India’s gross revenue stood at around Rs 430 crore (Rs 4300 million).
Dasgupta also indiacted that quite a lot of the cricket earning, including the World Cup, will get reflected in the profit and loss account of the company by the end of March.
Does that mean SET India would be in the black and ready to take off on a positive note next financial year ?
“If we account for all the cricket earnings as also the subscription revenue, then we’d be in the black. If we don’t, then we’ll continue to be in the red. It all depends how we do the accounting,” Dasgupta explained.
According to Dasgupta, subscription revenue has surged this year as compared to last year and has almost registered a 175 per cent growth this year. “At the moment, in the total revenue pie, subscription contributes as much as 20 per cent and it is a healthy sign because this segment is showing an increase which would reflect much moe at the end of the next financial year.”
Media analysts that indiantelevison spoke to for feedback, opine that if SET India is claiming to generate gross revenues of Rs 1000 crore, then stars like Star India would take home almost 40-50 per cent extra in gross revenue, while Zee Telefilms too should show an increase in gross revenue.
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.
