News Broadcasting
Zee News to drop ads during 9 pm bulletin
MUMBAI: How often have you been bugged by the commercial break which crops up just as the news anchor on prime time is about to take you over to a correspondent in another city? Pretty often enough for the Zee News management to take advantage of the irritation that viewers might experience.
The channel has announced Nonstop@9 a prime time 9 pm news bulletin from 9 February which will offer “rapid-fire break-free and non-stop” news. All the important news stories of the day will be crisply wrapped up in 24 minutes without any commercial breaks, claims the channel.
Zee News Ltd CEO Barun Das says: “Non-stop news at 9 is an effort to cater to the hard nosed news viewer by redefining the set parameters of news presentation. We have always believed in providing content which is not only informative but also presented in a unique format. Nonstop@9 is yet another approach from the Zee News stable to update its viewers about the happenings in a short and comprehensive format.”
Will viewers sink their teeth into the new news offering? Well, we will find out after the commercial break.
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.
