News Broadcasting
Ex-Times Now Anchor Shaheen Dawood joins iRealities as ‘Lead Content Producer’
MUMBAI: Former Times Now entertainment anchor Shaheen Dawood is now heading a large animation team at iRealities, one of the primeval and leading content production and marketing solutions company in Mumbai.
Shaheen, whose journey kicked off with iRealities with a kid’s television show that was being co-produced with Discovery Kids, is now the lead content producer at the company. iRealities amalgamates rich multimedia content and technology and specializes in offering technological innovation, digital services, and content creation and animation services.
Shaheen has previously produced daily and weekend entertainment shows for Times Now, and three popular kids’ series in 2D and 3D for Discovery Kids. She is now based out of New Delhi, and is currently supervising an animation team of 100 animators in Mumbai. She provides creative, strategic and editorial inputs into scripts and various other aspects of video production for projects in different genres.
On Shaheen’s journey so far with iRealities, iRealities Pvt. Ltd, C.E.O, Mr. Prasad Ajgaonkar said, “Ever since I worked with Shaheen, I was quite impressed with her creativity and enthusiasm for work. That is why I was happy to have her join our iRealities family. I strongly believe that with her excellent experience in the media industry, she is a highly valuable addition to our team.”
Explaining her choice to move to iRealities, Shaheen said, “When I was a part of ‘Discovery Communications India,’ the company collaborated with iRealities for creating a 3D animation kids series. In the process, iRealities taught me the importance of 360 degree knowledge of operations and technology. Later on, I decided to join them to immerse myself into different aspects of content production while building my personal brand equity in the Kids content vertical. Today, I am a part of the same world of Media from a different vantage. iRealities has a thriving innovation culture that fosters creativity and is allowing me to truly develop as a content producer.”
As Lead Content Producer, Shaheen manages a team of 100 animators, alongside storyboard artists, modellers, technicians, editors, and three music partners. She also assists in business development to expand the pipeline of projects based out of New Delhi for the firm.
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.
