News Broadcasting
CNBC slams INCablenet for blocking feed in Mumbai
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: The multi-system operator (MSO)-broadcaster face-off has taken another twist. Now the dramatis personae are the Hinduja group-controlled INCablenet and business news channel CNBC India. The former apparently has taken CNBC India feed off its networks in Mumbai since Tuesday allegedly in retaliation for a report carried by the channel on the Hindujas and Bofors case earlier this week.
In a counter move, CNBC India has decided to stop covering the Hinduja group’s business activities and has also deleted the Hinduja group’s scrip price movement from its ticker service, which comes at the bottom of the TV screen.
While the Hinduja Group has not sent any kind of written communication to CNBC India, two of their executives clearly confirmed that the action was taken since “the Hinduja Group was extremely unhappy with the CNBC report,” Haresh Chawla, chief executive of Television Eighteen Ltd, told indiantelevision.com today, when quizzed on the face-off with INCablenet.
TV Eighteen Ltd is the Indian joint venture partner of CNBC Asia in CNBC India.
INCablenet president Rajiv Vyas, however, said the business channel was off the network because it had failed to provide “an official undertaking that it was complying with all terms and conditions of the Cable Act.”
An official statement from TV18 has said the INCablenet action was an “unjust and illegal retaliation” against CNBC India for a 16 September report the business channel carried on submissions made by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a Delhi Court in the Rs 640 million Bofors pay-off case against the Hindujas. This story was based on a wire report put out by the United News of India news agency.
Condemning the alleged motives behind the move, CNBC India has stated that the action by the Hinduja Group is an “assault” on the freedom of the media.
As a mark of its own protest, CNBC India shall forthwith cease coverage of the commercial activities of the Hinduja Group, the TV18 statement said. “As a first action, share prices of Hinduja Group companies, viz Ashok Leyland and Hinduja TMT, are being dropped from the ticker on the channel. The advertising spots of Gulf Oil, another Hinduja Group company, on the channel are also being removed forthwith,” Chawla said.
CNBC India is also mulling moving the Press Council of India and the ministry of information & broadcasting for enforcing their just authority in this matter, besides taking recourse to any other remedy that shall be available to it, unless INCablenet apologises, the statement said.
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.
