News Broadcasting
Fox strips ‘Skin’ from schedule
LOS ANGELES: For weeks, Fox used every opportunity during the network’s high-rated playoff broadcasts to relentlessly plug the new Jerry Bruckheimer drama Skin.
On 4 November Skin fell victim to too much hype and not enough viewers, becoming the first new drama of the season to earn an outright cancellation.
Skin only aired three times since its launch on 21 October in the midst of the World Series. On that night, which also saw a less-than-impressive premiere for The Next Joe Millionaire, Skin attracted 6.3 million viewers. It was down to fewer than 5.1 million viewers in its second airing and fewer than 4.1 million by its final airing on 3 November.
Originally, Fox intended to re-air the early episodes of Skin in an effort to build an audience over time, a strategy that paid off with late-summer hit The O.C. The network abandoned that plan after only a week, opting to encore the season premiere of 24 instead last week.
For the next three Mondays, Fox will show a second original episode of The Next Joe Millionaire at 9 pm. Those episodes were supposed to run on Tuesdays during sweeps as a lead-in to 24, but after last week’s dismal showing, the Tuesday 8 pm slot will be filled with a variety of repeats for the rest of the month.
In the place of Thursday night’s scheduled 9 pm re-airing of Skin, Fox will encore The O.C.. This, coincidentally, was where Fox had hoped to move the series for the fall, before moving it to Wednesday nights.
To say that Fox’s schedule is pretty liquid at this point would be an understatement. Following the sweeps period, Fox will have a number of empty places in the schedule. The network has midseason replacements like Wonderfalls and Still Life waiting in the wings. With Luis already pushing up daisies, this gives Fox the unfortunate distinction of being the first network to cancel both a new comedy and a new drama. The network also has several other under performing new offerings which could soon be tempting the Fox reapers.
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.
