News Broadcasting
India Today TV launches political stock exchange as 2019 elections loom
MUMBAI: With 2019 general elections looming, India Today TV on Friday, September 7, launched Political Stock Exchange, a one of a kind show hosted by Rajdeep Sardesai and Rahul Kanwal, the best political anchor team in India.
The show is a next generation innovation that will revolutionise election analysis.
Political Stock Exchange will air every week, with Rajdeep and Rahul cracking the political divide, tracking the political worth of each party and evaluating their leadership.
The show is a report card of whose stock is soaring and whose graph is slipping and what are the issue of concern to the Indian voter.
The landmark show is designed to gauge political sentiments and present the real story to the viewers in a “matter of fact fashion”.
Leading up to the face-off between PM Narendra Modi and the opposition, Political Stock Exchange showcases actual data from the battleground by AXIS MY INDIA, the most credible number crunching pollster.
Our maiden PSE survey found that the political stocks of Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhra Raje have dipped sharply while her BJP counterparts in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh still remain the popular choice to lead their states.
According to the survey of the three poll-bound states, as many as 48 percent of the respondents wanted a change of guard in Rajasthan, with only 32 percent expressing satisfaction with the incumbent Raje government.
Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan emerged as the favourite of 46 per cent of voters while 32 per cent supported the Congress party’s Jyotiraditya Scindia as the next chief minister of the state.
The Chhattisgarh PSE report showed 41 per cent of respondents favouring incumbent Raman Singh as the next CM while state Congress president Bhupesh Baghel got 21 per cent support.
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.
