News Broadcasting
Prasar Bharati to include non-DD channels and data transmission in DTT package
It’s looking beyond its own living room. The Prasar Bharati, the holding company of DD and AIR, is looking at having non-Doordarshan channels and also the facility to transmit data in its package of digital terrestrial transmission (DTT) which will be experimented as a pilot project in Bangalore later this year.
The five-channel DTT project has been successfully tested in other metros like Delhi and Mumbai with the formal service likely to be launched in the Capital in about a couple of months time.
“In Bangalore, where we will be experimenting the DTT project with a 10-channel package we may look at including non-DD channels too as part of the package,” DD director-general S.Y. Quraishi told indiantelevision.com yesterday.
Though Quraishi was quick to point out that the non-DD channels may not necessarily mean the direct competitors of DD (like Star, Zee and Sony), he admitted, “We may have some other channels as part of the Bangalore DTT project.”
He also added the Bangalore project will also test whether data can be transmitted over the DTT network as value-added services which have the potential of generating additional revenue for the Prasar Bharati.
At the moment, the Prasar Bharati is negotiating with companies like the Mahendra Nahata-promoted HFCL for manufacturing of set-top boxes which will be necessary to access DD’s digital transmission.
“Once when the set-top boxes are started to be manufactured in large numbers in the country, then their prices too will fall (to as low as Rs 1,200-1,500) which will enable viewers to go in for digital terrestrialial services,” the DG said.
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.
