As senior V-P programming and production Rekha Nigam gets ready to clear her desk over the next few days, the reports coming out of Sony Entertainment Television are that there is a major restructuring in the pipeline.

In the immediate term Nachiket Pantvaidya, VP programming, and Anupama Mandloi, director programming, have been assigned the task of holding fort as it were till a final decision is made on who will replace Nigam. Additionally, a senior executive from the Los Angeles headquarters is reportedly coming down to India to check on things.

And the man who reportedly initiated the hatchet job - Los Angeles-based Columbia Tristar Television International president Michael Grindon - in India for the last three days for the very purpose, flies back tonight.

An industry observer believes that the channel has 30 to 35 people in excess at the moment and over the coming weeks and months what is likely to be witnessed is a major jettisoning process. At the end of it all there is likely to be seen a leaner, meaner organisation.

This "rightsizing" will also involve the exit of quite a few senior executives who cannot claim to have a clear role to play. And some who do have well defined ones but are seen to have fallen short on deliveries.

Grindon had reportedly scheduled a senior level meeting this evening to discuss all issues linked to the restructuring but that appears to have been put out of joint following the bomb hoax that led to the evacuation of the Sony offices earlier in the evening.

Lakshmi Venkat has joined United Television as a creative director telefilms.

Venkat, who took up office on 1 October, is responsible for developing new shows and monitoring shows done by her, managing her in house teams as well as external talent on her shows. Apart from being responsible for quality control and high TRPs for her shows, she will also be look after client relationships with the channels, ensuring schedules are fixed and maintained as per client requirements.

UTV?s TV content division consists of multiple creative directors who are responsible for the creative as well as qualitative content of their respective divisions. The other creative directors at UTV are Zarina Mehta, Ramesh Balakrishnan and Neeraj Naik.

Venkat comes to UTV from Zee TV, where she worked first as programming head and before being reassigned in March 2000 to create a new international channel called "Chakra" for the Zee Network.

Prior to Zee, Venkat has worked as general manager, programming and business development for In-House Productions, Mumbai. Before that she was with the IndusInd group, initially on their cable channel project and later as channel chief of In-Mumbai.

She also had a brief stint as vice-president of Shogun Films, before getting back to freelance production with various assignments: supervising producer for a chat show on Home TV; city producer for the election specials on national broadcaster Doordarshan; as well as consultant on concept and design of a daily breakfast show.

Hardly had the dust settled on the bombshell that programming head Rekha Nigam was leaving Sony Entertainment Television, its head office in Mumbai‘s Andheri suburb had to be evacuated after the police said they had received information that there was a bomb in the premises.

All the staffers were asked to go home and those who didn‘t were seen milling outside the premises. The staff cleared out at around 3:30 pm and the police arrived an hour later.

The dog squad was also pressed into service looking at the "gravity" of the situation and arrived at the site in "double-quick time" at 6:45 pm, just three-and-a-quarter hours after the order to evacuate the buildings. At the time of posting this report, the police were still searching the buildings.