News Broadcasting
Focus TV network is on the right track: CEO Neeraj Sanan
KOLKATA: Barely five months after NE Bangla rebranded itself to Focus Bangla due to a change of ownership, gossip has been doing the rounds that the Bengali News channel’s survival is a big question mark. For starters, its chief editor Biswa Majumdar has left for rival ETV Bangla as senior editor. Then the channel has yet to rake in the money and sources say that it was preparing to hand out pink slips and employee compensations.
However, when Focus Network group CEO Neeraj Sanan was contacted, he firmly asserted that any talk of the channel being shut down was baseless. In fact, he says there is no question of pulling down the shutters. “We are pretty bullish and are correcting everything that was wrong. We have just invested in a seven storied building in Odisha which will function as our office,” he says. “We have taken 30,000 square feet of space in Noida and our Agartala operations have restarted,” he says. “We are investing further: increments are slated to be handed out to our Bengal channel staff over the next couple of days and I will be personally going to Kolkata for the same.”
But even then media expert Swaraj Mukherjee told indiantelevision.com that “the Jindals are still negotiating with an NRI buyer to sell Focus Bangla but so far that’s in limbo.”
Sanan rubbishes all this as corridor talk. He says a new chief editor will be hired soon to replace Majumdar at Focus Bangla.
Although 2013 wasn’t a very productive year for Bengali channels, Ethical Media Trust (EMT) that owns the Focus News network is looking at actively investing in its six channels. The Trust has Matang Singh, who was the former owner of the network that was erstwhile called as Positiv TV, as the majority shareholder with several others pumping in money as well.
The Harvard educated Sanan admits that cash flows and revenue inflows could be better, but he points out that “they are at significantly better as compared to the zero levels they were earlier. Eventually, things will really look up.”
In an earlier interview with indiantelevision.com, Sanan had said that the network’s aim is to have an honest channel without any worry about the money required to run it.
(Updated on 4 August 2014 at 16:00 hours)
News Broadcasting
Senior media executive Madhu Soman exits Zee Media
Former Reuters and Bloomberg leader says he leaves with “no regrets” after brief stint at WION and Zee Business
NOIDA: Madhu Soman, a veteran of global newsrooms and media sales floors, has stepped away from Zee Media Corporation after a short stint steering business strategy for WION and Zee Business.
In a reflective LinkedIn note marking his departure, Soman said his time within the network’s corridors was always likely to be brief. “Some chapters close faster than expected,” he wrote, signalling the end of a nearly two-year spell in which he oversaw both editorial partnerships and commercial strategy.
Soman joined Zee Media in 2022 after more than a decade abroad with Reuters and Bloomberg, returning to India to take on the role of chief business officer for WION and Zee Business. His mandate was ambitious: bridge the newsroom and the revenue desk while expanding digital and broadcast reach.
During the stint, Zee Business reached break-even for the first time since its launch in 2005, while WION refreshed programming and strengthened its digital footprint across platforms such as YouTube and Facebook.
But Soman suggested the cultural fit proved uneasy. Describing himself as a “cultural misfit”, he hinted at deeper tensions between editorial instincts shaped in global newsrooms and the realities of India’s television news ecosystem.
Before joining Zee, Soman spent more than seven years at Bloomberg in Hong Kong as head of broadcast sales for Asia-Pacific, expanding the company’s news syndication business across several markets. Earlier, he held senior editorial roles at Reuters, overseeing online strategy in India and managing Reuters Video Services from London.
His career began in television and wire reporting, including a stint with ANI during the 1999 Kargil conflict, before moving into digital publishing as India’s internet media landscape took shape.
Now, after nearly three decades in broadcast and digital media, Soman is leaving Delhi NCR and returning to his hometown, Trivandrum.
Exhausted, he admits. But unbowed. And with one quiet line that sums up the journey: he didn’t sell his soul — because some things, after all, are not for sale.
