News Broadcasting
Israel gives all-clear to cable ops to dump CNN
MUMBAI: The Israeli government is calling it a purely “business decision”, but the timing is curious to say the least. Israel’s cable operators have been given the go ahead to drop CNN International from their networks.
The move comes at a time when CNN has come under increasing fire in the Jewish state for allegedly leaning towards the Palestinians in its coverage of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its endless cycle of violence.
The roots of this turnaround in Israel’s perceptions of the AOL Time Warner news network: CNN founder Ted Turner outraged Israelis and American conservatives in June when he accused both the Israeli and the Palestinian leaders of committing acts of terrorism.
The Israeli government claims though that the decision is unrelated to the network’s coverage and is purely a business decision. The three main Israeli cable companies have said they would pull the plug on CNN unless they found a mutually agreeable financial arrangement before the expiry of the current contract in November.
Officially, the channels are saying they cannot afford CNN’s prices in the current economic climate – the decision follows months of tough contract negotiations.
The likely beneficiary of the fallout looks to be CNN’s main US competitor, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. The three cable companies have recently begun to offer their customers Fox News, reports say.
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.
