News Broadcasting
BBC’s strategy, distribution director Carolyn Fairbairn to leave
MUMBAI: The BBC’s director of strategy and distribution and architect of Freeview, Carolyn Fairbairn has decided to leave the organisation after seven years.
BBC DG Mark Thompson, as quoted in an official release, said, “Carolyn has been the driving force behind some of the BBC’s most momentous decisions over recent years. She was an architect of Greg Dyke’s One BBC, led the BBC’s prescient move to launch Freeview and was the primary author of our manifesto for Charter Review Building Public Value.
“She is one of the most dedicated people in the business and, while I and many colleagues across the BBC will miss her energy and wise counsel, we understand her priority to put her family first,” he added.
Carolyn is a member of the BBC’s executive board. She was previously on the executive committee led by former BBC DG Greg Dyke and a former director of strategy at BBC Worldwide. There she developed the BBC’s plans to maximise commercial opportunities in the UK and around the world.
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.
