News Broadcasting
MTV Movie Awards garner all time high online votes
Online voting for this year’s MTV Movie Awards has crossed the eight million mark, an all time high, says the channel. The figure represents an increase of 75 per cent over last year.
Nominees for the 2002 MTV Movie Awards were chosen through a poll of MTV and MTV2 viewers, an official release says. MTV, MTV2 and MTV.com viewers, voted from 23 April till 18 May online via MTV.com or by telephone for selecting the winners.
The eleventh edition of the show will be taped on Saturday at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and will air on 6 June at 9 pm (ET/PT). A highlight of the show will be Kelly Osbourne performing her cover of Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach for the first time ever. Actors Ben Affleck (The Sum of all fears), Vin Diesel (Boiler Room), Winona Ryder (Reality Bites) and Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) are among the star-studded list of presenters. The show will be hosted by Jack Black and Sarah Michelle Gellar of Buffy: the Vampire Slayer fame.
The show will be available to a potential viewing audience of over one billion people through MTV’s 35 channels reaching 382.1 million households around the world as well as through syndication. MTV.com will feature convergent as well as original interactive programming.
Official sponsors of the event include 7 Up, GM, Apple, Hyundai, Nike, Visa and Mars.
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.
