News Broadcasting
Zee English to air three new shows in December
MUMBAI: Zee English’s year end bonanza includes three new shows. With rival English entertainment channel Star World seriously bolstering its programming line up, Zee’s English entertainment arm’s announcement of new shows comes at a good time.
Starting 8 December every Monday, is Larry David’s satire Curb your Enthusiasm. Next in line is new comedy series Half and Half, which is scheduled to air every Thursday at 10:30 pm starting 11 December.
While the fifth season of HBO’s Sopranos will hit the US small screens on March 2004, Zee English will premiere season three of mobster soap Sopranos on 14 December, which will are every Sunday at 9 pm.
A brand new comedy series that premiered last year in USA, Half & Half, stars Essence Atkins and Rachel True as half-sisters Mona and Dee Dee who have only one thing in common: their father. Created by Jeffrey Klarik and produced by Yvette Lee Bowser, the show has been nominated for several awards including the golden globe and Emmy awards.
Mona is a budding music executive raised by her single mother, Phyllis, to be an independent woman who does things in her own free-spirited and sometimes sardonic style. In usual sitcom style, younger sister Dee Dee is a privileged honour-roll college student who grew up in a two-parent home, but searches for her own identity out of the shadow of her overbearing mother, Big Dee Dee.
Growing up separately, these two virtual strangers suddenly become neighbours in the same San Francisco apartment building and experience the challenges of sisterhood for the first time. They often clash on everything from morals to money to men. Meanwhile, Spencer, Mona’s best friend, becomes the conscience of the group and helps build a bridge between the women.
The candid, unsparing and self-deprecating Curb Your Enthusiasm brings the off-kilter comic vision of Larry David- the co-creator and co-producer of yet another Zee English alumnus Seinfeld. Winner of Golden Globe for best TV series, this HBO show ranked seven in the entertainment weekly’s list of top ten TV shows.
The series blurs the lines between reality and fiction, as David (playing himself) and a cast of real and fictional characters are followed around Los Angeles by a ubiquitous camera that chronicles the private, often banal world of a relatively public man.
It features footage of writer Larry David at home, at work and around town, as he gets into predicaments with fictional and real-life personalities. The show shot without a script, also stars Jeff Garlin as manager Jeff Greene and Cheryl Hines as wife Cheryl. The cast is given scene outlines and often improvise lines as they go.
Stylish, shocking and dark humorous series, Sopranos takes a fresh new look at organised crime from the psychiatrist’s couch. Starring James Gandolfini, Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco and Michael Imperioli, the series is about a New Jersey gangster and family man Tony Soprano and his gang who reluctantly seek the professional services of a smart and sophisticated therapist.
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.
