News Broadcasting
BBC’s Asian Network launches extensive marketing campaign
MUMBAI: UK pubcaster the BBC has announced that Asian Network will launch its biggest marketing campaign next week across television, radio and online.
The New Sound Of Asian Britain campaign launches on 4 February 2008 and profiles the network’s passion for the best in Asian music and culture.
The BBC TV trail creates a new musical soundtrack, composed specially from many shorter musical scenes layered and looped together. It mixes modern influences like drummers and DJs with more traditional Asian sounds and instruments including Bollywood singing.
This reflects the range of Asian music played on Asian Network, and how new Asian talent is championed and different styles are fused together.
The campaign features Asian Network’s (and BBC Radio 1’s) award-winning Bobby Friction, hip hop turntablist DJ Kayper, rapper Mumzy and Bhangra singer H Dhami.
While hard-hitting journalism, like the award-winning Asian Network Report, is still central to the station’s output, playing the best in Asian music from across the UK and around the world is key to the station’s programming.
The campaign is made up of:
– a 30-second TV brand trail;
– two 10-second TV appointment to listen trails;
– an online game where fans can “mix their own desi track”;
– an online banner campaign;
– radio trails.
Said Asian Network Andy Parfitt acting controller, “The Asian Network campaign shows how music has been developed on Asian Network into a key part of the station’s identity. Music talent like Bobby Friction and DJ Kayper illustrate perfectly what Asian Network offers its young audience.”
Friction says, “Our listeners want to hear the best Asian music, new and old. Asian Network is all about supporting this music plus the up-and-coming artists, and you can’t get this great Asian music as deep, and on tap anywhere else. Taking this message to TV is huge and hopefully fans of Asian music will come and sample what’s on offer.”
The campaign consolidates a year of massive change for Asian Network and one where it celebrated Bobby Friction winning a Sony Gold Award in 2007 for his 10 pm specialist music show Friction.
Creative agency Fallon devised the concept for this campaign. Red Bee acted as production company with Guillaume Delaperriere as Creative Director (aka Giovanni Sample).
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.
