News Broadcasting
TV9 Bharatvarsh CEO Barun Das fires back at NBA
MUMBAI: The young and wiry-looking Barun Das is in a pretty belligerent mood. The CEO of Associated Broadcast Networks that runs the No 2 news channel in India TV9 Bharatvarsh has responded to the allegations that have been hurled against its meteoric rise by the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) to the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC).
In a release issued today, Das has stated that the NBA’s reasoning about TV9 Baratvarsh’s rise in ratings possibly reveals “a lack of basic understanding of the television news business. The fundamental reason behind our success is a concerted strategy of content, distribution and promotion aided by the astronomical rise in viewership during the early weeks of the lockdown.”
Das has added in the release that the NBA is incorrectly giving “credence to anonymous WhatsApp videos and messages doing the rounds to defame the TV9 network. These videos have already been dismissed as fake by BARC as per media reports. The network has already lodged an official complaint against this with the Telangana police.”
According to Das, there is no question of TV9 rigging viewership numbers as it was he who wrote to the NBA to suspend the viewership measurement of news channels on 22 March, two days before the lockdown, so that lives of journalists and camera persons would not be impacted by the coronavirus in the quest for ratings by the news channels.
His request was turned down by the NBA committee. “Now that TV9 Bharatvarsh has garnered the biggest share of the market during the pandemic, obviously the shoe is on the other foot,” he says.
Das has questioned if the NBA through these efforts is trying to coerce him to renew his membership of the association. “After much persuasion, we chose not to renew it in June and one month later we are in the NBA’s bad books,” he has alleged in the press release.
The 50-year-old executive who has seen many a battle in his previous associations with media companies such as Zee News, ABP News and India Today has said there are some allegations which the NBA has made against the TV9 network which are defamatory and they will be addressed in an appropriate manner very soon.
Earlier in the day, the NBA officially sent out a release asking third party intervention into BARC to investigate any hanky panky associated with TV9 Bharatvarsh’s sudden rise.
On 14 July, Das also got into a conversation with Indiantelevision.com group founder, CEO and editor in chief Anil Wanvari on all things related to news television and the current controversy.
You can watch the fireside chat here:
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: 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.
