News Broadcasting
TV9 launches city-centric channels in Mumbai and Bangalore
MUMBAI: Beating the recession, Hyderabad-based Associated Broadcasting Company Ltd (ABCL), which operates news channels under the brand name TV9, is investing Rs 380 million to launch two city-centric news channels in Mumbai and Bangalore.
TV9 Mumbai and News 9, the channels for Mumbai and Bangalore, will be launched simultaneously on 9 January.
ABCL will invest Rs 220 million in the Hindi news channel TV9 Mumbai and Rs 160 million in the English news channel News 9.
“We are investing Rs 380 million and will be launching the two city-centric channels tomorrow,” ABCL vice president operations KVN Murthy tells Indiantelevision.com.
TV9 will follow up the launch of TV9 Mumbai with Bollywood news channel Lehrein. “We are adding three channels in the quarter to take our total number of channels to eight,” says Murthy.
With the launch of News 9, the group will, thus, have two news channels in Karnataka. “News 9 will be targeted at the upmarket, young audiences in Bangalore. It will complement our Kannada news channel,” says Murthy.
TV9 Mumbai will have 70 per cent of its programming on news and current affairs while the balance 30 per cent will be a mix of lifestyle and entertainment news content.
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.
