News Broadcasting
Dailyhunt acquires local play to boost its Hyperlocal presence
MUMBAI: Bengaluru-based Dailyhunt, India’s #1 news and local language content application, today announced that it has acquired Local Play, a Bengaluru-based hyperlocal video content & news content application.
The acquisition underscores Dailyhunt’s aggressive strategy of attracting new users, residing in the real ‘Bharat’ – the tier 2, 3 and 4 Indian cities and towns—who are always hungry to stay updated on all the latest hyperlocal happenings.
Virendra Gupta, Founder, Dailyhunt said, “We saw the need of hyperlocal content is still largely untapped despite the presence of a host of traditional and new age content platforms in India. The latest acquisition of LocalPlay is a part of our strategic focus to penetrate the next billion users of Bharat and build deep sustainable moats around our business and will position us even better as the go-to destination for local language content in India. Dailyhunt will further scale up and produce five million pieces of hyperlocal content annually, available exclusively on Dailyhunt, making it the largest hyperlocal news and content destination in the country”.
Gunjan Kejriwal, Founder, Local Play, said, “I am really excited to be a partner on this journey with Dailyhunt. We were working on a specific use case of hyperlocal content and realized that users have broader content needs and given that Dailyhunt has the right mix of original, professionally generated and now hyperlocal news content. It made strategic sense to join forces with them which makes DH the largest local content destination and a quintessential part of the daily lives of its users ”
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.
