News Broadcasting
Sony ogles MGM; what happens to Zee MGM?
MUMBAI: Moves are afoot in the US which could spoil the plot for Zee TV in India. Especially its Zee MGM channel. Movie studio MGM – more than 70 per cent owned by billionaire financier Kirk Kerkorian – is in talks with Sony Corp for a sell out.
Two other firms, Texas Pacific Group and Providence Equity Partners, are partnering Sony in a deal worth close to $ five billion. Each of the three is expected to bring in $1.5 billion, with the rest to be borrowed from the market.
The three are looking at buying out the entire company which had a market capitalisation of $4.1 billion before the news of the talks broke. It would require Kerkorian’s sanction.
Sony is lusting after MGM because of its assets which include the vast MGM movie library inclusive of the James Bond movies and the Pink Panther series.
Kerkorian and his investment firm Tracinda Corp have bought and sold MGM and its various parts several times over the past few decades. Kerkorian and Tracinda bought MGM in 1996 from an affiliate of French bank Credit Lyonnais after the studio suffered years of Losses. Chief executive Alex Yemenidjian engineered a turnaround and added to the library by acquiring other companies, reports say.
Last year, MGM lost the bid to buy Vivendi Universal Entertainment after offering around $11.5 billion for assets that included Universal Studios, reports say.
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.
