News Broadcasting
UN broadcast rights treaty comes for debate next year
MUMBAI: As per the World Intellectual Property Organization (Wipo), a new proposal for an international agreement to protect broadcasting rights will be negotiated during a conference, which is scheduled to take place from 11 July to 1 August 2007.
The proposed treaty, which aims among other things to prevent broadcasting and cable signals being stolen and retransmitted elsewhere, was approved by a key committee of the UN agency.
Wipo director general Kamil Idris has been quoted in media reports as saying that the positive spirit of the discussions will further strengthen consensus on these issues in the months leading up to the diplomatic conference. Wipo deputy director general Rita Hayes described the meeting a tremendous success after eight years of work, and said a lot of the contentious issues could be resolved.
According to reports, a coalition of representatives from electronics and telecommunication companies, including Dell, Intel and Sony, as well as consumer rights organizations, said in a joint statement ahead of the Wipo meeting that they weren’t convinced such a treaty was needed and that the most important intellectual property issues were already addressed under existing law.
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.
