News Broadcasting
News18 India launches campaign; asserts channel’s leadership
MUMBAI: News18 India, Network18’s general Hindi news channel, recently launched a campaign with a humorous and quirky film to drive home its leadership position in the crucial primetime band in the highly competitive Hindi TV news segment.
Conceptualised by RK Swamy BBDO and directed by Rajesh Saathi, the film opens in a police interrogation room. A witness is being questioned. A seemingly stern cop, accompanied by two constables, asks the man about his whereabouts from 6 to 11 PM in the evening. Scared of the cops, the protagonist says that he was at home watching News18 India. When the cops don’t believe him, he re-iterates that he really was watching the channel. As the situation evolves a superior officer chips in to state that the entire nation watches News18India at that time and hence the person being quizzed is indeed stating the truth.
Commenting on the campaign, Rahul Kansal, Group Brand Advisor, Network18 said, “Over the past couple of years, there has been a surfeit of messages from media brands, claiming leadership. The format of the communication tends to be quite similar: screaming headlines, graphs showing research data etc. Over time, this communication seems to be working less and less, especially amongst over-communicated-to media and marketing professionals. We decided to present News18 India’s leadership story in a cut-through way, using humour and entertainment, instead of brute hard-sell. It seems to have worked well.”
The channel’s current campaign has an on-ground leg as well with extensive branding across 25 agencies in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore targeting advertisers and media planners with the unambiguous message that clearly positions News18 India as India’s Number one Hindi news channel.
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.
