UTV Broadcast restructures in and out

As of now, UTV Broadcast includes - UTV Movies, UTV World Movies and UTV Bindass and the recently-launched UTV Action. Anand's agenda at UTV begins with looking at all UTV business standalone.

Along with this change lot of internal restructuring has been also done like - Heather Gupta, who was earlier the Business Head of Bindass and Bindass Movies, will now only focus on Brand Bindass and will work towards realising the new ambition of the brand.

Similarly, Sameer Ganapathy will head UTV Movies, UTV Action and UTV World Movies. As per media sources, Deepak Lamba is also all set to join Bloomberg UTV as Business Head in January 2010.

As per the new structure, all the channels will have a dedicated sales head, who would report to the business heads and to Group Sales Head Nikhil Gandhi.

To all this restructuring, CEO, UTV Broadcast, MK Anand, who took the charge 2 months back said, "UTV was already on the growth path and this was perhaps one company for whom recession was over as early as January 2009. The steps that UTV had taken to ramp up its presence were robust, but my belief is that there was a need to revisit the focus on the sales function."

The CEO sounded very confident when he asserted and said that in December, Bindass will produce the highest ever ad sales figure ever done by the channel. It would be a 40 per cent increase in sales this year. He said that Bindaas aims to have a 25-50 per cent reach as other youth channels enjoy that kind of reach as well.

Anand also revealed all this restructuring has also been done to break even. He also informed that as of now only UTV Movies is breaking even, while UTV World Movies will break even soon. He is hopeful of UTV Action achieving break even within 6-9 months of its launch.