Months after its founder Ravi Prakash was unceremoniously sacked, the TV9 Group has appointed Barun Das as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Mahendra Mishra, who was acting as the Interim CEO of the group, would now be Principal Advisor to the Board of TV9, a press release stated.
The Associated Broadcasting Company Private Limited (ABCPL), the parent group of TV9, said that Barun, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Kolkata and the London School of Economics (LSE) was a veteran of the media business.
"Barun will be charged with the responsibility of driving synergies among all the channels and to build future-ready new businesses of the Group. His last corporate assignment was as the CEO of Zee Media Limited where he worked for over five years," the press release stated.
Commenting on Barun's new role, Singa Rao, Whole Time Director and member of TV9 Board said, "Our group is committed to the roles and responsibilities of the Fourth Estate. Given our leadership position in the southern and western parts of the country, we are now aiming at achieving similar success in the rest of the country and in the new media domain."
In a statement, Barun said, "I am excited about this new opportunity given the Group's vision. Every new opportunity comes with fresh challenges and I wish to contribute my bit along with the team. Since TV9 has impressive leadership in the regions of its current operations, it will be my pleasure and privilege, to drive its expansion in the national arena."
The TV9 group presently has news channels in Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati and English. It recently launched TV9 Bharatvarsh in Hindi, its first national news channel.
In April this this year, the police in Hyderabad had booked former TV9 CEO Ravi Prakash and CFO MKVN Murthy for forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy on a complaint filed by Alanda Media & Entertainments Pvt Ltd after the latter acquired majority stakes in Associated Broadcasting Pvt Ltd (ABCPL), the owner of the TV9 group of channels.
The dispute relates to Alanda Media buying more than 90.54% stake in TV9 and alleging that Ravi Prakash actively opposed Alanda's move to appoint four directors. However, Ravi Prakash has alleged that the Board members were representatives of political honchos “who were out there to devour every journalist and independent media house.”