News Broadcasting
Sir David Frost’s new deal with BBC News
MUMBAI: The BBC has commissioned legendary television host Sir David Frost to host a new high-profile series of interviews.
These will be done for the programme band The Frost Interview and will air on the UK channel BBC News.
Frost has spent four decades in the broadcast business. He is the only person to have interviewed the last six UK prime ministers and the last seven US presidents. In India several years ago, Frost could be seen hosting The Guinness Book Of World Records on DD.
The new series will be pegged to key UK and global news stories and will focus on the people at the heart of the news.
The series came about as a result of a new three-year deal between Frost and the BBC. It will be launched after the next UK general elections in approximately one year’s time. At that point, Frost will step down from his regular Sunday programme Breakfast with Frost in order to start work on The Frost Interview.
Frost added, “I am enormously excited about the new series of interviews. The 12 years of Breakfast with Frost have been some of the most fulfilling years of my career. However, once we are through with the next elections, I feel that the time will be right to ring in the changes.”
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.
