News Broadcasting
Three senior Aaj Tak staffers quit; two to join DD
NEW DELHI: At a time when India’s No. 1 news channel, Aaj Tak, has breached the 40 per cent-mark channel share amongst news channels at prime time on weekends, it has once again become a victim of poaching.
This time the organisation on the prowl is India’s pubcaster Doordarshan.
Two of the three senior Aaj Tak staffers, who have quit, will be joining forces at DD with former colleague Deepak Chaurasia, who is the consulting editor at DD News.
The people who have left Aaj Tak for DD News are senior producer Sanjiv Paliwal and assignment in-charge Rajnish Ahuja. Sources in both Aaj Tak and Doordarshan confirmed the development.
The third person, Ajit Anjum, would be joining BAG Films, promoted by Anurradha Prasad and her Member of Parliament husband, Rajiv Shukla.
“We have also settled the accounts of the three and wish them luck in their new endeavour,” a senior executive of Aaj Tak told indiantelevision.com today.
Paliwal and Ahuja are slated to formally join DD News by the end of this month. While the former would join India’s pubcaster as output editor-cum-anchor, the latter would be the assignment editor.
This is not the first time that poachers have stalked Aaj Tak. Early this year, when NDTV’s content contract for Star News came to an end and Prannoy Roy decided to start his own channels in Hindi and English, he had lured away some big names from Aaj Tak like Dibang, Naghma, Sipta Deb and Poonya Prasoon Bajpai.
Meanwhile, TAM data for the week ended 1 November shows that Aaj Tak, which had shed some percentage of channel share, is regaining lost ground.
According to the data, the channel share at prime time (6-11 pm) for Aaj Tak on weekends is 43 per cent, while on weekdays, it is 38 per cent. If the overall weekend day is taken, then also Aaj Tak is leading with 39 per cent channel share (up from 36 per cent), followed by Star News (20 per cent), NDTV India (17 per cent) and Zee News (15 per cent).
The TAM data also shows that all days channel share of Aaj Tak is 37 per cent and is followed by Star News (21 per cent), Zee News (18 per cent) and NDTV India (17 per cent).
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.
