News Broadcasting
TV18 Group creates new division TV18 Media Networks, names Saikumar CEO
MUMBAI: Raghav Bahl’s Television Eighteen Group has fused all its marketing and sales operations under a new division TV18 Media Networks. The group has promoted its VP sales and marketing B Saikumar as CEO of the division.
Speaking on the rationale behind the move, TV18 CEO Haresh Chawla said, “TV18, today stands as the largest news network with four news channels. It is merely to consolidate all the sales and marketing activities.”
When quizzed if the group was adopting a similar model to that of NDTV Ltd’s subsidiary NDTV Media (which manages the company’s ad sales and marketing), Saikumar said, “This is a division and very much part of the group. We are involved in activities of designing promos besides sales and marketing.” He declined to comment any further on the matter.
As CEO of TV18 Media Networks, Saikumar will have all the heads of sales and marketing from various channels of the news network – English business news channel CNBC TV18, Hindi consumer channel Awaaz, English news channel CNN-IBN and Hindi news channel Channel7 (soon to be re-named as IBN7) reporting in to him. Saikumar, meanwhile, continues to report in to Chawla.
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.
