Jonathan Howlett, global director of airtime sales of BBC World, is no stranger to India. He has come to the sub-continent often and is a keen observer of things, issues and trends. So much so that this time round when he was in India, with one of his stopovers in Delhi, Howlett pointed out that the Capital’s air smells cleaner compared to his early visits (the Supreme Court which has been at loggerheads with the Delhi government and transporters over phasing out old fume belching vehicles from the Delhi roads and go increasingly for CNG-driven public utility vehicles like buses and auto-rickshaws can sit back and smile now, probably).
Howlett, who joined BBC World in 1994 from the UK-based Carlton Communications (his posting was in Delhi in the early 1990s), not only sniffs out the cleaner air, but also business opportunities that India presents being in a unique position of having an economy which despite the global meltdown has been “comparatively less effected.”
A former director of sales also at Meridian Broadcasting, having spent his career within ITV sales, the seemingly 40-something Howlett, unlike some of his counterparts in other global media companies, is a soft-spoken and low profile man. Getting information out of him for a journalist looking for a ‘good copy’ is as hard as coming out of an interview on Hardtalk unscathed.
Still, braving the odds, indiantelevision.com’s Anjan Mitra tries to fork out information on BBC World’s new strategies for South Asia, specially India, and other issues in this recent interview with Howlett at the poolside of the Hyatt Regency in Delhi even as the BBC World’s PR people hover round to ensure that nothing too sensitive gets out .
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