News Broadcasting
Walk the Budget Tightrope with CNBC-TV 18
MUMBAI: CNBC-TV 18 has a special feast for it audience on Budget 2004. The latest launch- Tightrope 2004 – is a 300 hours of programming on Budget 2004.
The programme is divided in two phases. Phase I will be a run up to the Union Budget 2004 and the second will analyse the Budget.
As part of its buildup towards the Union Budget 2004, CNBC-TV18 will host six pre-budget round tables held across the country.
The roundtable on taxation was held in Mumbai on 25 June 2004. The discussion was based on ‘How will the government use tax to fill its coffers’. The Mumbai roundtable will be televised on CNBC TV 18 next week. An in-depth analysis on the issues related to the raising of standard deduction in personal taxation, double taxation treaty, service tax and VAT were discussed at the roundtable, says a company release.
Present at the tax roundtable in Mumbai were Ernst & Young chairman Jairaj Purandare, Bharat S Raut & Co partner Bharat Raut, tax consultant H P Ranina, Crawford & Bailey senior partner Dadi Engineer, PriceWaterhouseCoopers ED Prashant Deshpande and Ambit Finance director Dinesh Kanabar.
According to the release, more than 125 CEOs, numerous Indian and international experts will be part of this year’s programming line up for Budget 2004 on CNBC-TV18.
Says Television-18 ltd CEO Haresh Chawla, CEO, “A series of pre budget events and programming as well as the most comprehensive budget day and post budget coverage has been created under the Tightrope 2004 umbrella for CNBC TV18’s budget foray.”
The Tightrope 2004 aims to bring out the various conflicting issues that the FM will need to address. The Mumbai roundtable had opinion leaders and taxation specialists speaking about the budget implications on tax both – direct and indirect tax.
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.
