News Broadcasting
Aishwarya Rai, leading singers to felicitate Clean India champs at Safaigiri Awards
MUMBAI: The India Today Group announces the 2 edition of the India Today Safaigiri Awards 2016 – a platform that will showcase and felicitate the pioneering efforts of those who are leading the change in cleanliness. This is in continuation to the first edition that was launched in 2015, one year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi nominated India Today Group chairman and editor in chief Aroon Purie to be a Clean India advocate.
The event will be held on 2 October, the second anniversary of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan launchand the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. India Today Safaigiri Awards and Singathon will be a daylong event and will get musicians together to celebrate the Safaigiri movement. The biggest names in music will come together to spread the “Safai ki Dhun”.
Bollywood actor Aishwarya Rai and Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and Information & Broadcasting union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu will be the key note speakers at the India Today Safarigiri Awards. They will also be presenting the awards to the Clean India Champions.
The event will be highlighted by the Safai Singathon with singers performing throughout the day. The singers attending the daylong event include – Mika Singh, Adnan Sami, Sukhwinder Singh, Kailash Kher, Shalmali Kholgade, Shilpa Rao, Rekha Bhardwaj, Hans Raj Hans & Himesh Reshammiya.
The winners are selected across categories through a process of online entries, field work, and selection by a jury of eminent citizens. The jury members include India Today Group chairman and editor-in-chief Aroon Purie, Indian author Chetan Bhagat, MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, actor Vidya Balan, Feedback Infrastructure Services chairman Vinayak Chatterjee, Sulabh International founder Bindeswar Pathak and Infrastructure Development Finance Company (IDFC) director and vice chairman Rajiv B Lall. Chetan Bhagat, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Vidya Balan, Vinayak Chatterjee, Bindeswar Pathak, Rajiv B Lall, Mika Singh, Adnan Sami, Sukhwinder Singh, Kailash Kher, Shalmali Kholgade, Shilpa Rao, Rekha Bhardwaj, Hans Raj Hans, Himesh Reshammiya
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.
