Reorganisation at ZEE Network; Sunil Khanna to take over as president, ZEE TV

ZEE Network has just announced another round of reorganisation "to harness talents within ZEE Network and offer them wider responsibilities". Sunil Khanna currently CEO of ZEE-Turner is slated to take over as president, ZEE TV, very soon. He will take over from Apurva Purohit, who recently announced her decision to move on. Khanna, who did his engineering from IIT, Kharagpur, and management from IIM, Bangalore, has been with the media house for 10 years occupying various positions and has an enviable track record in distribution and marketing. Dheeraj Kapuria, currently heading operations of ZEE, USA, will take over as CEO of ZEE-Turner from Sunil Khanna. S Venkatasubramanian, his deputy at ZEE USA currently, will step into Kapuria's shoes.

Announcing the changes, Subhash Chandra, chairman and managing director, ZEE Telefilms, said, "This reorganisation is a result of our learnings from an in depth internal communications exercise in which I met most of the managers within the network to assess the width of in-house talent. It was truly satisfying to reaffirm that we have an extremely talented pool of people. I believe by enriching their portfolios they will lead ZEE Network into the New Year with greater vigour and effect."

The media group has also indicated that Ashwini Yardi, currently business head for ZEE MGM and ZEE English, will support Sunil Khanna as head of programming for ZEE TV. Well-known Bollywood writer and director Sudhir Mishra will continue to serve the company as a creative resource.

Going by the announcements made at the company earlier today, it is apparent that the group is looking to organise its global distribution operations in a more cohesive manner. Sunil Rohra, head of UK operations, and Pushpinder Singh, head of Africa operations, will report to the new CEO of ZEE-Turner, Kapuria. The US operations will continue to report to Kapuria.

Alongside the reshuffling of portfolios, the ambit of responsibilities of some key executives at the network has been expanded. Abhijit Saxena, currently handling international business (Asia Pacific) and syndication of programming will handle channels ZEE English, ZEE MGM, Trendz, Smile TV and FX Channel (the last two were launched on the DTH platform on October 2) as business head.

On his part, Yogesh Radhakrishnan will take charge of the other new channels on the DTH platform - namely, Premier Cinema, Action Cinema and Classic Cinema - in addition to his current responsibility of heading of ZEE Cinema and ZEE Music. © 2003 agencyfaqs!