News Broadcasting
Warner Bros pacts with China, Hong Kong for telefilms
CHINA: Warner Bros. International Television has entered into an agreement with two companies from China and a Hong Kong-based partner, Salon Films, for the joint development, production and distribution of a slate of 10 Mandarin language made-for-television movies.
The telefilms will each be a stand-alone story set in the Ching Dynasty (1644 -1911), but the 10 will have thematic continuity. Set against the rugged northwestern landscape of China’s Yellow River basin, the stories will profile fictional heroes who use their unique fighting skills to right wrongs, while highlighting the central themes of loyalty, self-sacrifice and the heroes’ struggles against the era’s corrupt landlords and petty officials. Each episode will be designed to highlight one of the traditional Confucian virtues, such as compassion, loyalty and courage.
Shot in digital video on location in China, each instalment will be 90 minutes long and the 10 films will be formatted with the flexibility of being broadcast as a series of 20 45-minute episodes. Although primarily intended for television and home video distribution, it is likely that some of the episodes will be released in theatres in China. Century Heroes and Hainan White Horse Advertising Media Co. Ltd are the two Chinese partners of Warner Bros in the venture. The PRC partners will be responsible for domestic distribution of the slate while Warner Bros. will distribute the films in all media outside of China.
The project, which begins production in Ningxia Province later this month, has attracted some of China’s most creative talents. Feng Xiaogang, China’s most commercially successful film director (Party A, Party B, Be There or Be Square), will act as creative supervisor and executive producer, managing the overall creative concept and script development, and supervising a team of directors including Huang Jianxin The Black Cannon Incident and Zhang Jianya Crash Landing.
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.
