News Broadcasting
Swaraj commissions DD Metro station in Bellary
MUMBAI:Information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj yesterday commissioned national broadcaster Doordarshan’s Metro Low-Power Transmitter (LPT) and laid the foundation stone for an FM radio station in Bellary, Karnataka.
Bellary is among 12 places in the country selected for the “narrowcasting” programme to be introduced by Prasar Bharati from 12 October, Swaraj has said. Programmes about local issues and schemes will be telecast to a limited population served by the LPTs.
The I&B ministry is meanwhile, giving final touches to a proposal permitting schools, colleges and other educational institutions to set up their own radio stations to cater to a variety of activities.
Swaraj has said the proposal will be placed before the Cabinet next month and initially IIMs, IITs and residential schools will be targeted. Swaraj’s stated aim is that every school in India should eventually have its own radio.
Once the proposal gets Cabinet approval, the Department of Telecommunications will be approached to allot frequencies to interested institutions. These radio “stations” will have a radius will be limited to about 5 km.
Regarding the controversial Conditional Access System (CAS), The Times of India quoted Swaraj as saying: “We are keeping our options open. It has been passed by the Lok Sabha but not in the Rajya Sabha since the Parliament was stalled. Let’s see what we can do about it.”
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.
