News Broadcasting
Walt Disney launches portal in China
Faced with mounting losses at home because of declining interest in its theme parks and a slump in ad revenues entertainment and media giant Walt Disney is looking to expand its business overseas, especially in Asia. It launched a Chinese Web portal on Sunday. At a news conference in Beijing on Sunday, actors dressed as Mickey and Minnie Mouse joined Disney executives as they unveiled the site www.disney.com.cn.
Disney, through the site, plans to take advantage of the world-wide popularity of its characters. The site will be linked to SeaRainbow’s 17 Chinese language web sites, including popular game destinations ourgame.com and asiagame.com.
SeaRainbow is a partner with China Telecom, which controls 82 per cent of the country’s bandwidth connections.
It is not clear whether Disney funded the Web site or when it expected the site to break even.
In a related development, reports say Disney is also planning to open a theme park in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.
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.
