News Broadcasting
STB duties: finance ministry won’t budge
MUMBAI / NEW DELHI: After a “disappointing” budget, the Consumer Electronics Traders and Manufacturers Association (CETMA), the apex body of electronics goods manufacturers in India, had to listen to more bad news today
A meeting among CETMA, information & broadcasting ministry officials and finance ministry officials ended today with it being firmly conveyed that there would be no reduction in duties on set top boxes, as was being sought by the electronics manufacturers.
“At the moment it looks that STBs will have to be imported with 51 per cent duty (25 per cent basic customs duty, 15 per cent countervailing duty and 4 per cent additional taxes), CETMA’s Suresh Khanna told indiantelevision this evening, sounding dejected.
According to Khanna in the initial phase of conditional access rollout, the whole set top box would have to be imported. It would only be later when demand picked up that semi-knock down kits and finally completely knocked down kits could be manufactured, Khanna said.
Khanna had said immediately after finance minister Jaswant Singh presented his budget that CETMA would be petitioning the I&B ministry as also the finance ministry “at the first available opportunity” to push for review of the government (in)decision on STBs, especially at a time when the government is pushing aggressively the implementation of conditional access system.
The manufacturers had been hoping that the budget would see basic customs duty on set top boxes being reduced to 10 per cent but that was not to be.
CETMA had also asked for zero per cent excise duty on finished goods and components like RF modulators and the Network Interface Module.
They had also demanded that sales tax be kept at four per cent, preventing fly by night operators and gray market from affecting legitimate sales of the Indian manufacturer. The association also wants a lead time of 90 days from the date of commercially clear purchase order for the delivery of the STBs.
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.
