News Broadcasting
Dainik Bhaskar top newspaper in Jalandhar and Amritsar
MUMBAI: As per the IMRB readership report Dainik Bhaskar with a readership of 3.18 Lac is the largest read newspaper in Jallander and Amritsar. It has a lead of over 43% over Punjab Kesari which has 2.23 lac readers.
Dainik Bhaskar was launched in Punjab in September last year with a subscription of 1.76 lac copies and now has 2.1 lac copies. It has in this short period of time expanded the market and created new standards. Bhaskar has more young adults readers in the age group of 20-34 years and also the mature reader’s subset of 45+ where the habits and the choices are tougher to break. In case of graduates too Bhaskar has 95 thousand readers compared to just 67 thousand of Punjab Kesari.
Says Bhaskar Group DGM Peter Suresh, “Readership surveys are the benchmarks of the key deliverables of a newspaper. We decided to conduct a readership research – as IRS and NRS will have reported us at a far later stage. In this we have involved clients and agencies at every stage- providing opportunity for rider question, back-checks and validation. Some of the clients have added brand / category questions which has thrown some interesting brand ownerships insights – which help in further understand the market. Our readership profiles cover all spectrums of society.”
Says Bhaskar Group GM Punjab Dharmendra Atri,” The taste of success is always felt best by the team that has been on the ground. For us it’s a great feeling to see quantified the growth. A huge team conducted the door-to-door contacts covering the entire area in the meticulous way. It just proves that the success is gained inch by inch, all effort have to work synergistic and more so that the Bhaskar Research an integral part if the market launch strategy process has been tested time and again and have borne results. Yes it’s true that for every market with time- we have modified / adapted and remodeled the same- but essentially finding what the reader is really looking for and providing that to him- was- is and will remain the foundation for any newspaper’s success.”
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.
