News Broadcasting
Sunil Khanna returns to Zee as Dish TV head
NEW DELHI: Is it the return of the prodigal? An old Zee Telefilms hand, Sunil Khanna, who had quit the group earlier this year has trudged back home to take up a new assignment in the fledgling DTH division, Dish TV.
Though there has been no official communication on this development, company sources told indiantelevision.com that Khanna has been sitting in Zee’s office on the outskirts of Delhi in Noida, which also houses the DTH division and the swanky uplink and play-out facility apart from the Zee News operation.
It is being said that Khanna has joined as the head of the KU-band direct-to-home television service, promoted by Subhash Chandra-controlled Essel Group. The DTH license holder is a Chandra company, ASC Enterprise.
Khanna, who has been associated with the Zee Group for over a decade, quit in June. At that time he was the president of Zee Network’s flagship channel, Zee TV. Prior to this stint, he was on the distribution side of the group as the Zee Turner chief executive and before that, had worked closely with a younger brother of Chandra, Jawahar Goel, at Siti Cable.
Khanna’s quitting the top post at Zee TV came six months after he took over the responsibilities from Apurva Purohit (now COO of the Times Group’s TV venture) with a view to overhauling the fortunes of the channel.
There were rumours in the industry that Khanna was headed towards Reliance Infocomm, which has been picking up professionals who have been associated with various media group’s distribution side. But indiantelevision.com, had also reported that chances of Khanna “being accommodated elsewhere in the Essel group” (the umbrella organisation under which Chandra carries out his various business activities) could not be ruled out.
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.
