News Broadcasting
Trai fixes revenue share for stakeholders; carriage fee to stay with MSOs
NEW DELHI: The Indian broadcast regulator has finally legitimised carriage fee or the payment TV channels make to be on tunable bandwidths and cable networks. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has also set the revenue sharing model for industry stakeholders.
Trai said today that from the revenue generated from pay channels, broadcasters will keep 45 per cent, multi system operators (MSOs) 30 per cent cable operators 25 per cent.
Additionally, carriage fee is to be retained fully by MSOs, while the basic tier services fee will be retained fully by local cable operators.
MSOs, according to Trai, can operate throughout a CAS area without any restriction on area of operation.
The objective of having standard interconnection agreements is to ensure that implementation of CAS does not get delayed in case service providers fail to enter into mutually acceptable interconnection agreements through negotiation within the stipulated time.
In a statement, the regulator said that apart from providing standard interconnection agreements, those dated 10.12.2004 have also been amended to prohibit such clauses in interconnection agreements that would require a distributor of TV channels using an addressable system to pay a minimum guaranteed amount as subscription fee.
Some of the highlights of the standard interconnection agreements are as follows:
# The service providers are at a liberty to enter into mutually acceptable interconnection agreements which are different from the standard interconnection agreements
# If any of the service providers in the CAS areas are not able to arrive at a mutually acceptable interconnection agreement within a time-period specified by the Authority, then they shall be required to enter into interconnection agreements as per the standard interconnection agreements
# The standard interconnection agreements between broadcasters and multi system operators have been provided only for pay channels.
# Term of standard interconnection agreements to be 12 months.
# All service providers in CAS areas who do not have pre-existing interconnection agreements as on the date of issue of this Regulation and who are not able to arrive at a mutually acceptable agreement shall enter into interconnection agreements as per standard agreements within 10 days of the receipt of permission by MSOs from the government.
# All the service providers in CAS areas who have a pre-existing interconnection agreement appropriate for operating in a CAS area as on the date of issue of this regulation, but are unable to arrive at a mutually acceptable agreement within 30 days of the expiry of the pre-existing interconnection agreement, shall enter into standard interconnection agreements within 30 days of the expiry of the pre-existing interconnection agreement.
Other details of the regulator’s latest directives on interconnect are available on www.trai.gov.in.
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.
