News Broadcasting
Sri Adhikari Brothers’ ‘views channel’ Janmat to go on air in October
MUMBAI: Promoters of Sri Adhikari Brothers’ Gautam and Markand Adhikari are planning to launch a 24-hour “views channel” titled Janmat in early October. The current affairs and news channel received an uplink nod from the information and broadcasting ministry earlier this month.
Plans are also afoot to launch a Marathi entertainment channel Mi Marathi towards the end of October.
Janmat will be the first interactive and current affairs channel in the country with 70 per cent of prime time shows having huge audience participation. The channel has already created three large state-of-the-art studios in the heart of Delhi and two in Mumbai.
There will be over 45 shows in a variety of genres across the board, from hard-core social and political analysis to crime, lifestyle, youth, education and women related programming. Viewers can participate any time of the day and night through a variety of Interactive media.
At launch, Janmat will introduce a talent hunt for television anchors throughout the country. Aspiring candidates will be given the chance to anchor shows on the channel. Through a variety of rounds, the top three winners will be selected as official anchors for the channel. Creating such a space for the common man to participate in the television medium is being done for the first time in the country.
These anchors will join the bandwagon of stalwart anchors already on board Janmat such as Vir Sanghvi, Karan Thapar, Harish Gupta, Umesh Upadhyay, Rahul Dev, Swati Chaturvedi, Anish Trivedi, Sandeep Bamzai, Manpreet Brar Walia, Meher Bhasin and film maker and social activist Ashok Pandit.
Senior Journalist Harish Gupta has been roped as director – news of Janmat and Umesh Upadhyay will look after the day-to-day affairs of the channel.
Sri Adhikari Brothers vice chairman and managing director Markand Adhikari says, “There are about 24 news channels telecasting the same news 24 hours, and many more are coming up, so much so that the space is totally saturated and fragmented. Janmat will create its own space and niche for which the Adhikari Brothers are well known. This will be the first channel whose focus is on people’s views blended with news.”
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: 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.
