News Broadcasting
Martin Baker is TWI’s commercial director
MUMBAI: Television production house TWI has appointed Carlton Content’s former commercial director Martin Baker to take on a similar role with it.
His responsibilities will include overseeing all TWI’s contractual relationships with broadcasters and co-production partners. He assumes his position next month..
The 44 year old Baker will also work closely with TWI senior VP- production and business development, Alastair Waddington, and its director of programming and production – Sport, Graham Fry, in relation to all TWI’s production business.
This amounts to nearly 9,000 hours a year. And he will have input into the business development arena overseen by Waddington.
TWI has stated that the new appointment reflects its growing activities across not only its traditional heartland of sports programming, but also in the entertainment and factual fields. This expansion into new areas has seen TWI win international awards for its In Colour documentary strand. This was the catalyst for burgeoning international sales of entertainment formats like I’d Do Anything, which has currently been sold or optioned in 24 countries.
TWI was recently appointed as the host broadcaster for the 15th Doha Asian Games 2006, in a joint venture with HBS.
As commercial director at Carlton, Baker was responsible for major deals for UK and international co-production, including a $20m international production fund with PBS. Baker was previously controller of business affairs at Carlton, and before that controller of legal and business affairs at Central TV.
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.
