InHouse Productions - better known for its big budget large format shows - will be getting down to producing more of the regular bread and butter serials and soaps, Uday Sinhwala, recently appointed chief operating officer (COO), says.

Sinhwala joined the Sudhesh ‘Mani‘ Iyer-promoted InHouse three weeks ago from Nimbus Communications. Sinhwala comes to InHouse after more than seven years of working with Nimbus promoter Harish Thawani in various capacities, the last being as COO.

"Yes InHouse is very much into lavishly mounted big budget shows but we need to expand the genres of programming that we cover. I will be paying more attention now to family serials and such," Sinhwala says. (Another entrant to the burgeoning ranks of the soap producers?).

"We will be targeting more channels with a deeper focus on TV and ad films so that we become a well rounded and complete production house," Sinhwala says.

Well known shows that InHouse has produced are Sony Entertainment Television‘s gameshow Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke and talk show Movers and Shakers. Inhouse also produces serials for Marathi language channel Alpha Marathi, among others.

A new broom - on most occasions - sweeps clean in most corporations. And Discovery Communications CEO Deepak Shourie believes in this in toto. He has started cleaning up the management within his charge. He has reportedly signed on old hire Rahul Johri, who was earlier with him at Zee News, as his marketing director. Johri was apparently with Shourie even in his days at Outlook.

It is Johri‘s hiring which has led to rumours that marketing director and advertising media whiz Ambika Srivastava has put in her papers. While Srivastava - God bless her - has been denying it to all and sundry, the industry buzz insists that she is just staying out her term at the company. Industry sources point out that she is likely to pitch for the Top Job in mindshare or hitch on to an NGO.

There is also talk that at least two other top executives are planning an early exit from the channel.

Johri‘s last employment was with tehelka.com as vice-president (sales and marketing). Apparently, Shourie is slated to bring many more changes within Discovery. And this has led to some discontent within a company, which has had little of that under the leadership of its former captain Kiran Karnik.

The new initiatives are aimed at helping Econnect tap new business opportunities, even as it serves as the Internet interface of the Zee Group, the release says.

One fallout of the restructuring process has been that close to 60 people have reportedly been asked to leave.