News Broadcasting
Esha Media Research sees upsurge in demand for political content clips
KOLKATA: With the 2014 Lok Sabha elections likely to become a case study for the whole country, Esha Media Research, a media monitoring and research company, has registered an increase in inquiries seeking clips of political content of top political leaders.
If sources are to be believed, Trinamool Congress’s advertising agency, after the party’s performance in the 16th Lok Sabha polls, has approached Esha Media to conduct a media perception study on the elections as whole.
According to Esha Media Research managing director RS Iyer, of the 1200 hours of business content they track, 700 hours comes from channels that have negligible proportion of political content. “However, during the election season, we have monitored and tracked political content of 45 hours per month resulting in 2,000 clips every month for the past three months,” informs Iyer.
“Apart from political parties and leaders soliciting these clips, we are also receiving inquiries from media agencies and business houses tracking the economic content of certain political leaders,” he adds.
Without revealing the names of the clients and agencies, Iyer informs that some forums are interested in getting the speeches of Prime Minister elect Narendra Modi.
He also emphasised that the demand for content clips is higher in politics than in business news. “For instance, 100 clips are derived from every 12 hours of business content while in the political content the same number of clips is derived in 2 hours 15 minutes. This indicates that more number of people are chasing the same portion of content in the political segment,” Iyer explains.
So what is it that is getting viewers attracted to the political content? Answers Iyer, “The oratory skills of the political leaders have attracted the attention of TV channels to go live and reach out to the drawing rooms of the citizens across the country.”
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.
