News Broadcasting
TRP scam: Former BARC COO Romil Ramgarhia arrested
NEW DELHI: Mumbai police has taken in custody former Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) COO Romil Ramgarhia, marking the 14th arrest in the TRP manipulation case. He has been remanded in police custody till 19 Dec.
The development comes a day after Republic TV CEO Vikas Khanchandani was granted bail in the same case.
Ramgarhia had left BARC in July this year after a six-year-long stint with the council.
The alleged scam was busted in October this year when Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh held a press conference stating that three channels – Republic TV, Box Cinema, Fakt Marathi – were rigging ratings by paying people to keep the channels on even when they were not watching them. The TRP contracts were given to a company named Hansa Research Group Pvt Ltd. During the investigation, it was found that the ex-employees of Hansa were sharing the TRP data with the channels.
Following this scandal coming to light, BARC suspended ratings of news channels for three months to "review its already stringent protocols and further augment them."
Mumbai police has been hot on the heels of Republic TV’s top executives, while the channel and its editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami claim the case to be vindictive action against it.
Earlier this month, Republic's chief operating officer Priya Mukherjee got anticipatory bail in connection with the TRP gaming case. On 5 December, the sessions court had granted bail to Republic TV's assistant vice president, Ghanshyam Singh, who was arrested in the same case on 10 November.
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.
