Zee recasts roles with eye on better picture

Sibabrata Das in Mumbai

Zee Telefilms is revamping its organisation and has shifted its corporate chief executive officer, Mr RK Singh, as head of new projects. The first venture will be online lottery. Playwin Infravest, a subsidiary of Essel Group, owns the licences for the lotteries of Karnataka and Sikkim states. The live draws are likely to be broadcast across the Zee network.

The network’s international distribution, which was earlier part of Mr Singh’s portfolio, has been given to Sandeep Goyal. Mr Goyal heads all the network’s broadcasting channels. Sources said Mr Singh would move completely out of corporate affairs by December.

The pay-TV market in India will continue to be under Dev Naganand, who is the CEO of access. The direct-to-operator project is under his control. Zee hopes to earn around Rs 100 crore from subscription revenues in the current financial year.

As Zee carried out minor reshuffle in its management, an unnamed business group has advertised for heads in news, regional and Hindi channels. Sources indicated it could be Zee. “Zee may be revamping its entire organisation,” the source said. Zee is the only media house that has presence in all the areas for which applications have been invited for various positions.

None of the senior Zee officials, however, were available for comment. Mr Goyal and Mr Singh were out of Mumbai and could not be contacted.

The ad has asked for international business managers based at London, Dubai, Sydney, Dhaka, New York, Toronto and Johannesburg. Incidentally, Zee has a presence in these countries. The managers will handle distribution and ad sales of all company channels in the respective countries.

The ad calls for a business head for movies. A creative head is also required who will oversee all creative and technical aspects of films being undertaken by the company. After the success of Gadar, Zee may be looking at appointing a business head for movies to give it a major thrust, the source said.

The ad calls for applications for a news channel head and a national head of sales.

Incidentally, Satish Menon recently quit as head of Zee news and all-India sales head of the network. The ad says that the company requires heads for the regional channels.

Zee may be looking at strengthening its regional channels.