News Broadcasting
Zee Cafes first local soap looks to get ‘Bombay Talking’
MUMBAI: In Mumbai you have to be happening today to make it big! And to make it big you have to get Bombay Talking about you!
As part of its ongoing localisation drive, English general entertainment channel Zee Café will launch a soap Bombay Talking from 19 November 2005. The soap will air every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 10:30 pm.
The show, which is being produced by UTV, marks the first English language soap on Indian television since A Mouthful Of Sky, which aired on DD in the late 1990s.
As had been reported earlier by indiantelevision.com Zee Café has already launched two Indian shows. One is After Hours where host Nina Manuel brings the latest in the Mumbai social circuit. The other show Simply Style sees presenter Bandana Tiwari juggling roles of fashion commentator, fashion fraternity insider and fashion guide.
Bombay Talking, meanwhile, chronicles the story of Sheena played by newcomer Priyanka Bassi. The show follows her journey as she gets involved with the glamorous and often unreal world of the rich and famous set. She tries to find herself in the myriad world of tinsel town and encounters people like Sandhya Khanna. Khanna is a former star turned film moghul, who runs a successful production house. She will leave no stone unturned to push the career of her daughter Reema Khanna. Reemas launch vehicle will be the Rs 1 billion project Laila. If the project does not work then the production house will collapse and will signal the end of the Khanna reign over Bollywood.
The soap revolves around three elements. First there are the women who have been brought together by fate. Then there are the men who love them, leave them, put hurdles in their path. Then there is the stage, which is Mumbai the mecca of Indian filmmaking where dreams are made and buried in a relatively short span of time. It has been directed by Anand Rai.
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: 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.
