For a while now, a commercial mainstream British channel has quietly become the biggest channel in South Asian homes. Not Star Plus, not Geo TV, not ZEE TV, not Sony TV, not ARY Digital. ITV1. And nobody in the category has said it out loud.
Audience data spanning over 15 months – January 2025 to March 2026, on BARB, covering both Sky and Virgin households across the “All Adults” Indian and Pakistani target audiences, shows the same pattern repeating for both diaspora communities. Rank every channel each audience watches by share of total viewing and one name sits above every Desi (Indian and Pakistani) broadcaster in both cases: ITV1.
Among Pakistani audiences, ITV1 commands 7.4% of all measured viewing, ahead of Geo TV on 6.0%, ARY Digital on 5.3% and Hum Europe on 3.6%. Among Indian audiences the gap is wider still. ITV1 takes 10.9% of all measured viewing, comfortably clear of Utsav Plus (or should we say Star Plus now), the single biggest Indian channel measured, on 7.4%.
This isn’t a one off quarter either. Over the same period, total measured viewing for both communities moved sharply, and not in one direction. Pakistani audience viewing swung by 42.7% between its high point in January 2025 and its low point in August 2025. Indian audience viewing swung by 33.3% between its high point in December 2025 and its low point in March 2026. Whichever month you sample, ITV1 was still there, still ahead, and that should worry every broadcaster in the category, not just one.
It’s tempting to read this as evidence the diaspora is simply assimilating and leave it there. That’s too easy, and it lets everyone in the category off the hook. A handful of structural pressures are converging at once.
Pay TV subscriptions are declining across both communities, shrinking the base every homeland channel is competing for. Audiences are volatile month to month rather than steadily declining, which makes any single channel’s ratings story harder to trust. The EPG is crowded, with dozens of South Asian channels fighting over a fraction of the households mainstream broadcasters reach by default. The people making viewing decisions in these households are increasingly younger and UK raised, with habits formed on British schedules rather than imported ones. And no single homeland channel is pulling even half of what ITV1 gets from the same audience.
If a British terrestrial channel with no language targeting, no cultural programming strategy and no diaspora sales desk is outperforming every dedicated South Asian broadcaster with its own audience, that’s not a footnote. That’s the story.
None of this means homeland programming has lost its audience entirely. ZEE TV, Sony TV, Colors, Geo TV, ARY Digital and Star/Utsav Plus all still command real, measurable shares. But “real” is relative. When the mainstream default option beats your top performing channel among your own target audience, every commissioning decision, every schedule strategy and every pitch to an ethnic advertiser needs to reckon with that, not talk around it.
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The uncomfortable question here isn’t “are we losing the audience to the mainstream”. That’s been true for years and isn’t news. It’s “why, specifically, is a general entertainment British channel with zero cultural targeting consistently beating channels built for this exact audience.” That’s a programming question, not a platform question, and it won’t be solved by carriage deals, EPG position or pricing alone.
Broadcasters in this category have tended to treat ratings softness as a distribution problem or an advertiser economics problem. This data suggests at least part of it is a content problem, and content problems don’t fix themselves with a better channel number.
Data note: figures are BARB “Impacts (Reach/Weight)” , covering the Digital Satellite (Sky) and Digital Cable (Virgin) platforms, “All Adults” Indian and Pakistani target audiences, January 2025 to March 2026 (15 months, with 2026 reflecting Q1 only). Percentages are each channel’s share of that community’s total measured viewing across all channels and both platforms over the full period.
About the author
Govind Shahi is a London based media and distribution consultant specialising in diaspora markets, international broadcast strategy and advertiser economics.
Media Pulse’s goal is to spotlight the realities facing Asian media, challenges that have historically been ignored or swept under the rug. We encourage you to share your thoughts, reply, and comment. This feature does not represent the views or editorial position of BizAsiaLive.com.
