News Broadcasting
Viacom’s TV Land to honour classic series ‘Bewitched’
MUMBAI: Viacom’s cable network TV Land and the American state of Massachussetts have announced that they will honour the classic comedy TV series Bewitched. In India the 1960’s show airs on Hallmark. The film version with Nicole Kidman will be released later this year.
TV Land will come out with a nine-foot sculpture celebrating the hit series.
The bronze statue features the character Samantha Stephens who was played by actress Elizabeth Montgomery. TV Land and Nick at Nite president Larry W. Jones says, Bewitched was and still remains a magical and beloved series. The series filmed several episodes in Salem, so it is truly fitting that we would celebrate it with a statue here. We are excited to honour the show with a statue in this great city.
The sculpture aims at blending contemporary art and pop culture together in the city of Salem. The sculpture will be unveiled on 15 June 2005. On the show a witch married to an ordinary man cannot resist using her magic powers to solve the problems her family faces.
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.
