Zee rejigs its regional news ops as Jagdish Chandra’s role is reduced

Changes are afoot in the top leadership of Zee Media’s regional news operations. Jagdish Chandra, CEO, Regional News Network of Zee Media, will now handle the responsibilities of Zee Rajasthan, Zee Hindustan and Zee Salaam (Urdu), along with newspaper DNA’s Jaipur edition. He will continue to be on the board of ZMCL and DNA, while stepping down as CEO of DNA. His designation will continue as CEO, Regional News Network. 

According to a Zee Media communiqué, “Jagdish Chandra has expressed his desire to lighten his load of his current responsibilities of all regional news network as well as DNA (all editions), considering the fact that he has been continuously travelling for 20-25 days a month, which has been taking a huge toil on his health.” 

In the meantime, till the changes are realigned, Chandra will continue to handle the current role and responsibilities for a fortnight. He had joined Zee Media from ETV in January 2017 as CEO, Regional Channels. A month later, he was made Executive Director, Regional News Channels and in March, he took on the responsibilities of CEO of DNA. 

In addition to the three channels, Chandra will also look after various business interests of the group in Rajasthan, which include Zee Studio, Solar park, Cable and Broadband business as well as any other actions that may be required in Rajasthan. He will also continue to assist the group in any area that may be entrusted to him outside Rajasthan. 

Zee Media is making several other changes in the roles and responsibilities of regional news network, which include: 

Uday Nirgudkar, in addition to his responsibility of Zee 24 Taas, will also be responsible for Zee 24 Kalaak. Deepak Rajani will be reporting into Nirgudkar. 

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. Bhibhu Patnaik and Anirban Choudhary will be aligned to Vaishnav. 

Dinesh Sharma, who is currently handling Zee PHH, will in addition to editorial responsibility also handle the sales for Zee PHH. The sales team for this territory will be aligned to Sharma. 

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 Jagdish Chandra. 

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. 

Resident Editor of DNA Jaipur Edition will report into Jagdish Chandra.