Media giants become media victims

Many saw it coming. When Basu joined Star TV as CEO in November 1996, he did it in a blaze of publicity, even likening himself to NewsCorp chairman Rupert Murdoch in one interview. His mandate was to convert Star Plus into a locomotive to take on Zee TV and to deliver DTH — his interpretation turned out to be to take Doordarshan’s staff with him (of which lot Bimla Bhalla, V Basavaraj, Naazish Hussaini and B Guha were to be removed in a ruthless restructuring two years later) and convert the Lamington Road office into a Mandi House waiting room. His one triumph, Star News, launched from no less than Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral’s home, was too closely identified with Prannoy Roy. And his programming decisions, barring notable exceptions such as Saans for the much-favoured Neena Gupta, turned out to be one long gatha of indulgence.

When Jindal joined Zee Telefilms as CEO in April 1996, his mandate was restructuring. With a firm eye on the bottomline and an obsession with the brand imported from his years as Director, Corporate Affairs, at Bennett & Coleman, he went about it in his idiosyncratic fashion — powerful satraps such as Karuna Samtani, Nittin Keni and Meenakshi Madhvani were eased out through a regime of tight expenditure controls and loyalists who believed in his marketing mantra were put in place. Everything was perfect, from the alleged activities of a dirty tricks department to the launching of a politically agile Zee News India.

Too perfect, perhaps, after all he even survived the suspicion of brothers Lakshmi and Jawahar Goel. With Subhash Chandra Goel, Chairman, Zee Network, sorting out his problems with Murdoch and the latter divesting himself of stock in Zee TV, and DTH being a distant possibility, Jindal was clearly not needed any more. As for Basu, with his DTH team headed by Urmila Gupta being steadily pared down, and Star TV Asia CEO Gary Davey quitting, it was clear that old hand Peter Mukerjea, Chief Executive of News Television India, was going to take over (that the war between Star and Zee is over is evident from Mukerjea’s conciliatory presence at the launch of Zee’s TV World at Mumbai’s Cricket Club of India.

As for Jindal, after a brief period when he was in bad odour with Subhash Chandra, while the merger talks were underway, with R K Singh being made CEO of Zee Telefilms and in charge of regional expansion, and Deepak Shourie being elevated on Monday from Director and CEO of Zee Publishing to the boss of all news-related products (including the still-to-be-launched English news channel, Asia News Network), it is clear that being managing director of Zee Network means little if you’re hemmed in by some powerful CEOs.

But then as an analyst puts it, the days of the long-running Tara are over. Now every TV hotshot’s life-span is like a TV serial — with a maximum run of 104 episodes, to be renewed after 52 episodes. Subject to TRPs.