Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Indu Shekhar Sinha takes over as BBC World Service's India Business Development Manager

Date: 04.11.2008
BBC World Service has appointed Indu Shekhar Sinha to take up the role of India Business Development Manager for one year. From November 2008, Indu Shekhar will manage BBC World Service's multimedia distribution and business development activities in India. Indu Shekhar replaces Vineeta Dwivedi while she is going to work for the DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) Consortium as Project Director for one year. Indu Shekhar, who is currently BBC Hindi's Desk Editor in London, has over 13 years' experience of working with Indian and international media organisations. Prior to joining the BBC in 2001, he worked as a business journalist for Times Television and as prime-time news presenter at Zee News. In addition to serving various editorial roles at the BBC, he has also worked with BBC Strategy which supports the BBC's public service activities. As part of the team, he contributed to paving the way forward for the BBC in South Asia. As India Business Development Manager, Indu Shekhar will be responsible for developing the distribution of BBC World Service output in India across a range of platforms including FM, broadband, DTH channel distribution system, mobile phones, satellite radio and TV. Head of Asia Business Development, BBC World Service, Neil Curry, comments: "I am delighted with the appointment. Indu Shekhar brings a wealth of experience of the Indian media market as well as strong editorial values. "His energy, enthusiasm and strategic thinking will be a great asset in driving our business interests in this most exciting of markets."

BBC World Service is an international multimedia broadcaster delivering programmes and services in 32 languages, and tailored for various regions, including: Albanian, Arabic, Azeri, Bengali, Burmese, Cantonese, English, English for the Caribbean, French for Africa , Hausa, Hindi, Indonesian, Kinyarwanda/Kirundi, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mandarin, Nepali, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese for Africa, Portuguese for Brazil, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Somali, Spanish for Latin America, Swahili, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek and Vietnamese. It uses multiple platforms to reach 182 million listeners globally, including shortwave, AM, FM, digital satellite and cable channels. It has around 2,000 partner radio stations which take BBC content, and numerous partnerships supplying content to mobile phones and other wireless handheld devices. Its news sites include audio and video content and offer opportunities to join the global debate. The number of weekly unique users of the BBC World Service websites combined with the international news site in English averaged 13.2 million in March 2008. For more information, visit www.bbcworldservice.com
To find out more about the BBC's English language offer and subscribe to a free e-newsletter, visit bbcworldservice.com/schedules. Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) is the digital broadcasting system for the broadcasting bands below 30MHz (long, medium and short wave). It has been endorsed by the ITU, and is standardised as ETSI ES 201 980. While DRM currently covers the broadcasting bands below 30 MHz, the DRM consortium is extending the system to the broadcasting bands up to 120 MHz. This system extension has the internal project name DRM+. DRM has near-FM sound quality plus the ease of use that comes from digital transmissions, combined with long range and low power consumption. Further information on DRM is available from www.drm.org.

(BBC World Service Press Office)

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