News Broadcasting
UK Gearhouse Broadcast to supply broadcast facilities for the 15 Asian Games
MUMBAI: UK based broadcast solutions company Gearhouse Broadcast has bagged the contract to supply broadcast facilities for the production coverage of the 15 Asian Games.
The 15 Asian Games officially commence on 1 December, 2006 with the Opening Ceremony and conclude with the Closing Ceremony on 15 December, 2006. For the first time since 1974, the Games are held in Doha with over 45 countries and regions competing across a record-breaking 39 sports in more than 40 venues.
Gearhouse Broadcast will supply, install and operate eight complete production flyaway systems which will range from six camera to ten camera and will be used for the production coverage of the host feed at the twelve stadiums where the various sporting contests will take place. The flyaway’s come out of Gearhouse Broadcast’s range of flyway products and systems at their UK offices.
Gearhouse Broadcast will supply a total of sixty-five operational crew members including engineers, audio engineers, communication engineers, vision controllers, and riggers.
The Games are demanding logistically due to the events being held across twelve stadiums throughout Doha. Provision of broadcast equipment for the Games involves supplying cameras for the field of play areas including twenty-eight HDC 1500s, twenty-six BVP 950s, and high speed super-motion cameras using the Sony HDC 3300 and Thomson LDK23-HS and also three Panasonic AWE 800 SDI cameras, informs an official release.
Gearhouse Broadcast MD Eamonn Dowdall said, “The cameras chosen offer the latest technology available and they will provide the host broadcaster with picture quality of the highest standard.”
The Replay rooms will contain twenty-five EVS XTs. And the twelve production control rooms at each stadium venue will be fitted out with nine production galleries each of which will be installed using sixty-seven LCD Vutrix Series of 23” HD/SD screens. A range of nine vision desks will be supplied from the Sony DVS 7350 to the new MFS 2000, Snell and Wilcox’s Kahuna, Thomson’s DD Series. Controlled via the desks are replay transition devices which will be used to give the mix effect between slo-mo replays and live production.
The master control Areas for engineering and quality control will comprise of test and measurement equipment from Tektronix utilising the WFM 700 and the 601E series. Routers selected will be the Pro-bel series and the Pro-bel Aurora series HD/SD routing systems. Leitch equipment has been selected for the distribution and glue products. Evertz has been selected for the system sync generation equipment and fibre equipment used.
The Audio Control Room will comprise of audio desks from Soundcraft Series 5 56-channel, Soundcraft B800 48-channel console, DDA CS-8 32 channel audio console, and Midas Venice 240 24-channel consoles. Audio monitoring and quality control will be carried out on Bel series monitoring equipment. A variety of microphones have been selected to cover the sporting contests being played which comprise of twenty-four Sennheiser MKH- 816, ninety Sennheiser MKH 416, eleven Audio Technica AT 835 ST stereo microphones and various smaller microphones.
The communications systems provided will be the Clearcom Compact 72 series and new Riedel communications systems. All of the associated broadcast cabling at each of the twelve venues will be supplied and installed by Gearhouse Broadcast. And all of the cabling used will be Belden broadcast series cable, including audio multi ways, triax video and data cabling.
Gearhouse Broadcast will provide ancillary services for the Games consisting of project and logistics management and technical support. The broadcast solutions provider will handle the procurement of equipment required and co-ordinate the transportation of this equipment to and from the venues in Qatar.
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.
