News Broadcasting
TO THE NEW in association with IBN LIVE launches ‘Social Tracker 2014’
MUMBAI: With the increasingly integral role that social media is playing in political campaigning for the upcoming General Elections 2014, TO THE NEW, a social and mobile first digital services provider, in association with IBN Live has launched a real-time tracker that evaluates digital conversations. The ‘Social Tracker 2014’, is a dashboard collecting data based on research by ThoughtBuzz, the social media analytics’ arm of TO THE NEW that analyzes real-time conversations and emerging trends on social media.
The dashboard will track the top political personalities and political parties who are actively being discussed across social platforms, both of which will be updated on a daily as well as a weekly basis. Additionally, it will also track the sentiment around the top personalities and political parties highlighting the most positively and negatively discussed personalities and parties and share word clouds that will highlight the key sentiments that are dominating the digital platform. The dashboard will also showcase top cities from where conversations are originating.
The dashboard aims to analyze digital conversation from across various social platforms such as Twitter, blogs, news sites and forums and can be viewed on the IBN Live Website starting from Monday, March 24, 2014. Audiences will receive daily updates and insights on the buzz around political campaigning in the run up to the General Elections 2014.
Commenting on the tracker Irfan Khan, Marketing Head, TO THE NEW said, “Young Indians are inherently social and mobile first. As they are going to play a major role in upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Social Tracker 2014 will provide real-time glimpse into the opinions, concerns and sentiments of these voters.”
“There are truths in social media which conventional journalism cannot unearth. It’s very exciting to find hidden insights and report them to our readers” added Arunava Sinha, Head – IBNLive.com, Network 18 Group.
You can take a look at the Social Tracker 2014 dashboard here.
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.
