News Broadcasting
US IPTV company Kasenna appoints Kumar Shah as CEO
MUMBAI: The California-based IPTV firm Kasenna has appointed Kumar Shah as CEO. Shah succeeds Mark Gray, who will continue to serve on the Kasenna Board as its Chairman and also continue to drive strategic partnerships across the globe.
Kasenna provides video-on-demand (VOD) content and MPEG-4 ready IPTV applications for Triple Play services over broadband networks.
“With our rock-solid and battle-tested VOD Server, innovative LivingRoom Middleware Platform, and industry leading ViewNow Content Aggregation and Management business, Kasenna has clearly established a demonstrable technology and product leadership in the IPTV market,” said Kumar. “I am excited about joining Kasenna at this crucial inflection point for Kasenna and for the IPTV market. I am looking forward to leveraging our product and technology leadership into a global leadership position in the IPTV market.”
An industry veteran with more than 20 years of business, marketing, and sales management experience, Shah was recruited by the Kasenna board members from US Venture Partners, where he was an Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR).
Prior to that, Shah was involved with a number of venture capital funded start-up companies, most recently as President & CEO of Occam Networks (OTC: OCNW) and prior to that as Chief Marketing Officer of AccessLan Communications, which was acquired by Advanced Fibre Communications, which in turn was acquired recently by Tellabs.
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.
