News Broadcasting
Times Group taking up stake in IOL Broadband
MUMBAI: Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL), which is the holding company of the Times Group, is picking up a small stake in IOL Broadband for Rs 50 million.
IOL, which has a content delivery affiliation contract with MTNL for IPTV in Mumbai, will make a preferential allotment of 500,000 equity shares of Rs 10 each to BCCL. “We will be making the allotment to BCCL at around Rs 100 per share,” says IOL Broadband director Oberai.
IOL is also making a preferential allotment of 700,000 warrants to Maula Trading Company for Rs 70 million. “We will be in raising additional funds to expand our rollout. We plan to launch IPTV also in Bangalore with BSNL,” adds Oberai.
IOL Broadband has already signed an IPTV deal with the Star network and is offering 24 channels. “We are in talks with other broadcasters. We are offering video on demand (VoD) services and are planning to ramp up our movie library. We currently have rights for 50 movies,” says Oberai.
IOL is planning to increase the authorised share capital from Rs 500 million to Rs 70 million, divided into 70 million equity shares of Rs 10 each. The company also plans to increase the limit for foreign institutional investors to 49 per cent of its paid up equity share capital.
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.
