NEW DELHI: Director-general of All India Radio, Brijeshwar Singh, has been given additional charge of looking after pubcaster Prasar Bharati as its chief executive.
He succeeds Navin Kumar whose term as DG Doordarshan and acting CEO of Prasar Bharati ended on 23 August 2006.
A 1975 batch Indian Administrative Service officer of Tamil Nadu cadre, Singh has been heading All India Radio since February 2004.
Under his stewardship, All India Radio clocked an impressive 70 per cent revenue growth during 2005-06, even while keeping intact its focus on public service programming.
AIR earned Rs 2.7 billion in revenue during 2005-06.
Singh's keen interest in classical music enabled AIR to bring out quality CDs under the brand name Akashvani Sangeet, deriving rare content from the archives of All India Radio.
An active participant in broadcasting issues, Singh is also the
vice-president of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association.
Prasar Bharati is not having a regular CEO since K S Sarma stepped down on June 30, 2006 on attaining the age of super annuation.
A regular CEO will be appointed by a three-member high level committee headed by the Vice President of India.
MANDLOI ACTING DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF DD
Meanwhile, LD Mandloi, the senior most deputy director-general of Doordarshan, has been named as the officiating director-general (DG) of the television pubcaster.
Mandloi, a programming side person, unlike his bureaucrat predecessors, will look after day-to-day functioning of Doordarshan till a full-time DG is appointed.
According to sources in the government --- despite autonomy through an Act of Parliament, Prasar Bharati still remains an extension of the establishment --- 17 applications have been received till now for the post of Doordarshan DG.
However, a regular DG of DD can only be selected once a full-time CEO of Prasar Bharati is in place.
After former information and broadcasting secretary Bhaskar Ghose in the late 1980s and early 1990s, DD has seldom had a full-time DG.
Ghose, father-in-law of CNN-IBN chief editor Rajdeep Sardesai, presently is the chief executive of Lok Sabha TV, an initiative of the Speaker of Lower House of Parliament. The channel is dedicated to airing proceedings of the Lower House, apart from other serious programming.
