News Broadcasting
Surabhi set to stage comeback – on a satellite channel
Surabhi, the cultural show that once enjoyed cult status in the country, may soon be back.
This time on a satellite channel, with a more upmarket look, an urban slant and a young, dynamic style. Siddharth Kak’s Cinema Vision India is in talks with Star India for relaunching the show in a new avatar later this year, says the producer. The task should not be difficult, considering the massive amount of research material and audio visual archives that are currently at Kak’s disposal. The star anchor team of Kak and Renuka Shahane however, will not be gracing the programme anymore. “Its time for youngsters to take the show forward, to give it a new image,” says Kak. “The generation that grew up on Surabhi is no longer the show’s target audience,” he points out. The Best of Surabhi is currently running on Star Plus on Sundays.
While the finer details of Surabhi’s second phase are still being worked out, Kak has already firmed up plans for a Surabhi Foundation, an audiovisual archival treasure trove built up during research for the serial. The Surabhi Foundation is envisaged as a multimedia multiple platform for training events, discussions, workshops and screenings can take place. Part of the Foundation’s exercise is Akshaya, a culture resource base envisaged as a single window offering, which will bring citizens over 20,000 hours of footage from the fields of dance, art, craft, music, culture, personalities, religion and architecture.
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.
