Reality check for Subhash Chandra: Ensuring the show goes on at Zee

The crisis at Essel might precipitate the future proofing one of India's largest media companies.

Could the tenacity that made Subhash Chandra, 69, be his undoing? Why is exit such a bad word in the Indian media businesses?

Those are the two key questions that the crisis hitting India’s first media mogul brings up.

In December 1991 Chandra and adman Ashok Kurien, co-founder of Zee Group, flew to Hong Kong. They had been talking to David Manion, president of the newly launched Star TV, to lease a transponder on AsiaSat1. It was owned by a consortium which included Hong Kong-based billionaire Li Ka Shing. His son Richard Li had launched Star TV on the spare