News Broadcasting
Lewis-Tyson fight highest ever-grossing PPV event
Could this happen in India? Wouldn’t our big broadcasters just wish it were so. The heavyweight showdown between reigning heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis and former undisputed heavyweight champion Mike Tyson on Saturday night (Sunday morning in India) registered a massive 1.8 million pay-per-view buys in the US. The telecast generated $103 million of pay-per-view revenue, the highest-grossing pay-per-view event in history.
The 1.8 million buys represents the highest figure for a heavyweight pay-per-view prizefight since 1997. In fact, it is the first prizefight to do more than one million buys since 1999, when two fights surpassed the one million-buy mark. The buys consisted of 1.2 million buys from cable systems and 600,000 from satellite homes throughout the US.
Lewis, a three-time heavyweight champion, retained his title by scoring a dominating 8th round knockout victory. The event was presented by Budweiser and promoted by Lion Promotions, Main Events and Fight Night, Inc. in association with Prize Fight Promotions, LLC.
The showdown was co-produced and co-distributed by SHOWTIME and HBO. In India the fight aired live on Sunday morning on Star Movies.
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.
