News Broadcasting
UTV sales and syndication COO quits
MUMBAI: United Television (UTV)’s chief operating officer, air-time sales and syndication Anil Mishra, has put in his papers after nine year of service. He will be leaving the organisation on 14 November.
Speaking to indiantelevision.com, Mishra says, “I needed a change. Nine years in an organization is a long time.” After a moment’s hesitation, he adds, “I thought it’s good for me to leave in a positive note.”
Mishra plans to launch his own media company in the near future. “Right now, I am taking a break for a week at least. After that, I will start work on setting up my own project. It will be a company dealing in media, air-time sales,” he says. Mishra hopes to launch his company in December.
Mishra started his career with UTV in Delhi way back in 1994. His work comprised of coordination with Doordarshan back then, he informs.
Mishra is the fifth top management officers to have left UTV in the past few months, the others being UTV’s COO TV content Manish Popat (in July), movies section COO Sanjay Bhattacharjee (who resigned in May), chief financial officer of operations Sanjay Dosi and head of USL (United Studios Limited) Parab Sundar.
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.
