News Broadcasting
Three million homes have no CBS service via TWC
MUMBAI: As Time Warner Cable and CBS continue their negotiating deadlock, Starcom MediaVest researcher Sam Armando has discovered how widespread the blackouts are individually in the New York, Los Angeles and Dallas markets. TWC has refused to make the figures available.
Armando writes in a blog post that 17 per cent of homes in both New York and Dallas are without the local CBS station, while the figure climbs to 26 per cent in the Los Angeles market.
On a national level, the number of homes with CBS-owned local stations blacked out is around 3.2 million, according to CBS. Showtime is off the air across TWC’s national footprint, as TWC and CBS continue to battle over terms of re-upping a carriage deal. The blackouts started 2 August.
CBS has called on talent to encourage TWC customers to switch providers and on Monday brought the Manning brothers into the fold. A newspaper ad in New York might suggest CBS thinks the blackouts could continue until 15 September.
“You could miss this historic matchup,” the ad reads, referring to the New York Giants vs. Denver Broncos game on that Sunday, with Peyton and Eli Manning facing off.
The ad also suggests viewers could miss the much-anticipated college game between Alabama and Texas A&M on 14 September “featuring Heisman winner Johnny Manziel.” That copy could become moot any day now as Manziel is under NCAA investigation for receiving payments for his autograph; he could be suspended for the game.
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: 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.
