Jagdish Chandra steps down as CEO of DNA, to oversee only three channels of Zee Media

Zee Media Corp has restructured the top deck for its regional news network, reducing the role of Jagdish Chandra, CEO, Regional News Network, to three channels – Zee Rajasthan, Zee Hindustan and Zee Salam (Urdu) and DNA Jaipur. Besides, Chandra will also look after various business interests of the group in Rajasthan, including Zee Studio, Solar park, Cable and Broadband business. Sources close to the development confirmed the news to BestMediaInfo.com.

Chandra will continue to be on the board of ZMCL and DNA while stepping down as CEO of DNA. His designation will continue to be CEO Regional News Network with the above responsibilities.

Chandra who joined ZMCL as CEO Regional Channels in January this year was appointed Executive Director, Regional News Channels in February and CEO of DNA in March.

As CEO of Regional Channels at ZMCL, he was given the mandate to handle a large bouquet of channels, including 24 Ghanta (Bengali), Zee Madhya Pradesh-Chhattisgarh, Zee Punjab Haryana Himachal (Punjabi and Hindi), Zee Sangam (Hindi), Zee 24 Taas (Marathi), Zee Purvaiya (Hindi), Zee Kalinga (Oriya), Zee Marudhara (Hindi), Zee 24 Gantalu (Telugu) and Zee Gantalu (Kashmiri).

An IAS officer, Chandra had quit his administrative job in the Gujarat government to join Eenadu Network on September 1, 2008, to handle its two channels ETV Madhya Pradesh and ETV Rajasthan as CEO. Later, he went on to head all the channels of ETV Network.

Following the changes in Chandra’s role, ZMCL has reorganised the roles and responsibilities of the heads of its regional news channels. Uday Nirgudkar in addition to his responsibility of Zee 24 Taas will also be responsible for Zee 24 Kalaak. Dileep Tiwari in addition to his current responsibility of Zee MP-CG will also be responsible for the new upcoming channel Zee UP-UK.

Purushottam Vaishnav will be designated as Editor for Zee Bihar Jharkhand and will also be responsible for Orissa and West Bengal. Dinesh Sharma who is currently handling Zee PHH in addition to editorial responsibility will also handle sales for Zee PHH.

Dwaiyapan Bose, Editor in Chief of DNA, will be reporting to Sudhir Choudhary while Anurag Bhatnagar and Kamal Dhingra will be in the interim responsible for sales and all other functions of DNA, respectively.

Manoj Jagyasi and Harjit Singh from Zee Unimedia will continue to be responsible for the sales of other regional channels in addition to handling sales for channels being handled directly by Chandra.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com