News Broadcasting
Synovate appoints Uday Kagal to head Mumbai operations
MUMBAI: Global market intelligence firm, Synovate has appointed Uday Kagal as its head of Mumbai branch operations.
Kagal will report into Synovate India MD Alok Shanker and will primarily be responsible for new sector forays and revenue generation for Synovate’s largest branch office in India.
Kagal is backed with 19 years of experience in market research in different capacities – both on the agency and client side. So, apart from stints with erstwhile Marg (now, ACNielsen Org Marg) and TNS Dubai as research director and senior group account director – he has experience with a multitude of large corporations, states an official release.
His assignment with HLL was that of CMI manager responsible for brand tracking and ad-pre-testing; his stint with HSBC Bank as senior VP-customer connect analytics and relationships (CCAR), entailed Implicit research, brand tracking, customer satisfaction, market potential modelling and customer lifetime value segmentation. Kagal is credited with setting up the CCAR division for HSBC Bank.
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.
