News Broadcasting
Star Vijay to celebrate Kamal Hassan’s birthday
MUMBAI: If the Hindi Entertainment channels go ballistic over Big B’s birthday celebration, its time for the Tamil entertainment channel Star Vijay to turn on the camera for Tamil superstar Kamal Hassan’s birthday.
Star’s Tamil Entertainment channel has special plans to celebrate Hassan’s 49th Birthday today.
Winner of over three National Awards and 10 Filmfare awards, an actor-director-writer-producer Kamal Hassan has been awarded the Padmashree title. While he has over 200 films to his credit, he achieved a sort of stardom at the young age of three. He won the President’s gold medal for the best child artiste in the first film.
In a bid to build up the relations with the film industry, Vijay TV has slotted a wide array of special programs on the channel, from dawn to dusk, to celebrate the remarkable actor’s birthday, says a company release.
At 8:30am in the morning, Star’s Tamil channel started off the day long celebration with Hello Thamizha. The audience got a chance to wish Hassan live on his birthday, beside the programme featured some of Hassan’s hit songs and unforgettable scenes.
Throughout the day, the channel will be airing special fillers detailing the milestones in the actor’s life. Beside that there channel is flashing birthday wishes to the star all day long.
At 2:00 pm in the movie slotVelli Thirai, Kamal’s memorable silent comedy film Pesum Padam, which was dubbed as Pushpak for the Hindi Audience, starring himself alongside Amala will be featured on the channel.
Whilst the celebrations are on, the highlight of the day is Naayagan at 9:30pm, a one hour slot where Hassan will be sharing his life with the audience. Hassan will take the viewers through some known and some lesser-known episodes in his life, like the part where he worked as a barber in a saloon near his house.
Besides Hassan sharing his life, the programme will also showcase his dear and near ones like brother Charu Hassan, Balu Mahendra, K.Balachander, AVM Saravanan, R.C. Shakti talking about their memorable moments with him.
The channel, to wrap up the day, has a a special mock telephonic interview segment Saghalai vs Raghalai scheduled to air at 10.30 pm, which will showcases his career’s best comedy scenes.
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.
