News Broadcasting
Turner India refutes AOL-Time-Warner-Zee DTH venture story
The following is the text of a faxed message received by Indiantelevision.com from Turner Interational India managing director Anshuman Misra.
I refer to the article on indiantelevision.com “Government looks ready to lift DTH FDI; Zee-AOL-Time Warner and News Corp likely to announce DTH ventures.”
The reference to a joint venture between AOL-TW and Zee is totally baseless and is pure speculation. We would like to clarify that it is Turner who is hosting the reception in honour of Mr Levin and not “AOL Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin and the Zee Network chairman Subhash Chandra” as incorrectly stated in the article.
We request you to carry the correction on the website at the earliest.
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.
