News Broadcasting
China to start mobile TV trial in 2007
MUMBAI: China will begin trial broadcasts of mobile television by mid-2007.
The digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) technology will be tested next year and a satellite system will be activated in the first half of 2008 so that the Olympic Games can be broadcast to mobile-phone users across the country, China Daily reports.
The country’s two biggest mobile telecom operators, China Mobile and China Unicom, are expected to sign agreements with phone makers by the end of the month to buy TV handsets.
Besides mobile phones, big-screen personal digital assistants (PDAs) and MP4 players will also be able to receive TV signals, Yang Qinghua, director of the television division of the SARFT’s Broadcast Science Research Institute, was quoted in the report as saying.
The mobile-phone TV market in China is estimated to reach $756 million by 2008. China is the world’s biggest mobile phone market with 426 million mobile phone users and in the next five years, about eight per cent of them are expected to subscribe to the mobile TV service, the Chinese government estimates.
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.
