News Broadcasting
Showbiz TV to launch in first quarter of 2001
Production company Nimbus Communications has postponed the launch of its entertainment channel, ShowBiz TV, by two to three months.
Uday Sinhwala, Nimbus’ Head of Television, said the channel will now be launching anytime in the next three months.
There were still some glitches to iron out, Sinhwala said, explaining the cause of the delay. “We don’t want to tie ourselves to a launch schedule and then realise after the channel goes on air there are things which need ironing out,” he said. Sinhwala added that their women’s channel would go on air towards the end of 2001.
Informed sources have surmised that one reason for the postponement was that the programming library was not yet in place and additionally, the management feels the ad market is not buoyant enough to support such a channel currently.
Showbiz TV will be loosely modelled on E! which is a very popular showbiz pay channel in the US partly owned by Time Warner group Nimbus will also be picking up some content from E!
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.
