News Broadcasting
Star News uplinking gets govt. nod
NEW DELHI: Finally the green signal is there.
Star News has been given the government nod to uplink from India after all the official permissions were being obtained.
According to information and broadcasting ministry officials, the process seems to be over as the Star News matter got the final okay for uplinking from India.
The Star News issue had been hanging fire as the permissions needed from various government organisations had not been completed.
“All the clearances that were needed by Star News are now complete,” a senior I&B ministry official told Indiantelevision.com today.
With this Media Content & Communications India Pvt. Ltd. (MCCS), a joint venture between the Kolkata based Anand Bazaar Patrika (ABP) Group and Star, is now fully equipped to uplink the Star News channel from India.
The case of MCCS had whipped up a controversy with the domestic media companies accusing Star of flouting government rules and having direct control over the news channel.
Amidst controversy, Star News had been uplinking from India on temporary permission from the Indian government.
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.
