The Continuously Intriguing Media

It's getting so that even reporting on people changing jobs in the media has become risky business. As in, risky for one's credibility. Even though we do rely on very good sources before putting the information out here.

The latest U-turn (and believe us, it is a U-turn) is morning show star Dr Shahista Wahidi's announcement today on ARY that the news of her departure from the channel is simply rumour and not based on fact. Yes, Dr Wahidi, tell that to Geo which had bade Nadia Khan farewell and was having your new show's set designed. Obviously, this can only mean that ARY has upped the ante even further than the 22 lakhs a month Geo had offered Wahidi to lure her. Some people have all the luck, particularly at channels where many complain of not being paid their far more meagre salaries on time.

It was precisely because of this pendulum style of job negotiations that we had held off on reporting about The News senior investigative journalist Rauf Klasra's potential move from the Jang Group to the Express Media Group, which he himself had threatened many times earlier and which we had actually known about for some time. But now that the daily Express itself has confirmed it, we can add to it the reasons for it beyond the lure of a better pay packet.

In fact, Klasra had been rather unhappy at the Jang Group for quite some time. The official reason that Klasra is apparently now giving is his unhappiness with the, in his opinion, 'agenda-driven anti-government line of the Jang Group.' (It must be remembered that Klasra is known to be quite friendly with Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who is from his hometown, Multan, and who it is believed is sometimes himself the source for some of Klasra's stories.) The upset with the excesses of the Jang Group may well be true, but it is also true that Klasra has been at daggers drawn with some of his colleagues at the Islamabad bureau of The News, particularly with the Editor Investigations Ansar Abbasi and his junior Ahmad Noorani, whom he accuses of constantly maligning and undermining him.

The rivalry between the three truly came out into the open last year when the website pkpolitics.com ran a story about Klasra's alleged corruption in receiving favours from the government in the allocation of plots and government housing for his (government employee) wife and relatives, claims Klasra strenuously denied. Klasra believed the story was instigated by the Nawaz Sharif camp to discredit him in retaliation for stories he had done about the Sharifs' alleged corruption and maladministration and claimed in a Jang column in September 2009 to have served a legal notice for 100 million pounds on the website (we have no idea what became of it). But more than that he also saw the direct connivance of Abbasi and Noorani in what he termed a 'smear campaign' against him. (Noorani, who most believe says things and writes stories at Abbasi's behest, even weighed in publicly against Klasra.) Things became so bitter at the Islamabad bureau that Mir Shakilur Rahman did one of his trademark organizational fudges to calm things down: he removed Klasra from under Abbasi and gave him a made-up title of Editor Reporting, reporting directly to the Editor. (Incidentally, the current Editor of The News Rawalpindi, Mohammad Mallick, supported Klasra in his fight against pkpolitics, which makes eminent sense since pkpolitics had also run a story earlier about Mallick's alleged corruption.)

But things continued to simmer and came to a head last month when Klasra ran two stories on September 28 and September 30. The first of these claimed that "backdoor channels played a key role" in defusing a crisis between the government and the judiciary. Bizarrely, the newspaper carried another story side-by-side with this, from "our correspondent" (code for Abbasi / Noorani) quoting Supreme Court sources debunking Klasra's story. (The Jang Group must have the only newspapers in the world that carry two diametrically opposite 'investigative' stories on the same day.) In fact, the Supreme Court exerted so much pressure for a retraction that The News published an "unconditional and sincere apology" on September 30. However, since Klasra was adamant about his story (insider sources say he told management he was willing to go to jail for it if need be) the apology was published from the editor, printer and publisher. No journalist appreciates a management that refuses to stand by its reporter and apparently Klasra was incensed that the apology was published despite his standing by his story. In fact, he blamed Abbasi for goading the management into publishing the apology and even hit out publicly at Abbasi on a Dunya TV programme later.

The second story Klasra published on September 30, claimed that President Zardari had admitted in an internal Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) meeting that he had been "misled" into not defending in court the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) by some unnamed "players of the game." Klasra further cited "one insider source" to claim that Zardari may have been referring to a well-respected but unnamed former judge from Karachi. Once again, two days later Ahmad Noorani published a story claiming that Justice (retd) Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim denied the "president's defamatory allegations" and mocking Klasra for defaming him. This was another bizarre rebuttal since Klasra had never actually named anyone in his story. It is also obvious from the story that Ebrahim had been goaded into offering a rebuttal, as if he was the only respected retired judge in Karachi.

These two instances of direct undermining by colleagues were apparently the straw that broke the camel's back, leading Klasra to finally say enough is enough. For whatever it's worth, Klasra has often broken some interesting stories at The News / Jang and his departure will certainly leave the Jang Group poorer in the investigative department. The Jang Group will also miss his contacts within the government since Abbasi and Noorani have already been accused by the PPP of running one-sided stories. Klasra, whose recently published book Ek Siyaasat, Kayee Kahaniyaan [One Politics, Many Stories] has already become a best-seller, may be on a high at the moment, but it remains to be seen how well he adjusts to a new organizational culture at the Express Media Group.

Meanwhile, Aaj TV continues its blood-letting of staff after the departure of Syed Talat Hussain for Dawn and DawnNews. More staff have been fired from the Islamabad bureau, leading others to wonder just exactly what Aaj's management has in mind for the channel.

Downsize Kar Kay Geo?

Even as Geo has hired some new faces, such as Dr Shahista Wahidi - at a salary well in excess of Rs. 20 million lakhs a month - and rehired others such as Sana Bucha at double their old emoluments (we have heard the new figure is 700K), it seems all is not hunky dory for everyone at the top-rated channel.

 Not everyone at Geo is smiling like Dr Shahista Wahidi

There are well-founded murmurs within the organization that a large number of staff are about to face the sack. The scale of the coming lay-offs varies depending on sources but almost 50 staffers, including reporters, anchors, producers, assistant producers and support and technical staff, mainly from the Karachi and Islamabad bureaus, are set to lose their jobs in the next few days. Two anchors have already apparently been shown the door while the position of crime reporter Fahim Siddiqui (host of Geo's FIR programme and head of its crime desk) also hangs in the balance after he impetuously resigned over a power tussle with the Karachi bureau chief and Geo News head Azhar Abbas (Siddiqui is apparently back in touch with Geo supremo Mir Shakilur Rahman to save his job). In addition, some of those from the doomed Geo English project who had been adjusted within Geo but who never quite managed to fit in are also being let go.

Since management is remaining tight-lipped over the downsizing, it is not quite clear whether the drastic moves have to do with Geo feeling the pinch of the recessionary times or whether the sackings are based on job-related evaluations. Certainly the recent hirings seem to suggest, much to the resentment of staff, that revenues are not really an issue. Rightly or wrongly, those facing the axe are upset that they are being let go after standing by Geo during its difficult times. Given the Jang Group's culture of accumulating human resources and almost never firing anyone even if they have zero output - it is often said that people only leave the Jang Group if they themselves choose to - the change of management culture seems to have come as a shock to most. However, it is also true that, like many bureaucracies (PTV comes readily to mind), Geo is overstaffed in many positions. In particular, the Islamabad bureau - which produces only Hamid Mir's Capital Talk - has been regularly identified as being incredibly overstaffed in terms of technical staff.

Of course, staffers who are being let go or who fear being let go are claiming that they are being victimized because of personal grudges and that their evaluations have suffered because of their inability or unwillingness to "butter up" the management. Obviously, such claims are often normal in such situations and there is no way to verify such claims. We hold no position on individual claims (though some may have weight), but while we feel for people losing their earnings, it is also important to state that we see no reason why someone with poor job performance should be retained purely out of a sense of charity. That is how government departments like PTV operate, and look where it's got them.

In the current difficult economic times, many media houses have resorted to slashing costs through shedding staff, among them DawnNews, Aaj TV and Samaa. The most recent has been the Nawai Waqt-owned Waqt News which apparently cut almost 90 staff a few days ago. Geo and Jang Group as a whole are obviously not immune to the trend of the times.

Incidentally, there is evidence to suggest that the slashing of unproductive costs may well be a new direction at the Jang Group under the returning prodigal son, Mir Ibrahim Rahman (MIR). The first to feel the brunt of the new management culture was the music channel Aag, which had long been under the knife. It is said that MIR was ready to shut down the loss-making channel a few months ago and has only allowed it one final chance to pull itself out of the red. Most staff there have already been sacked and only a small staff remains to try to pull off some sort of miracle.

After the fate of Dr S&M, Aamir Liaquat and Nadia Khan - all of whom were let go when the ratings of their programmes began to dip - it is also rumoured that Geo is not too happy with the fall in ratings of Capital Talk. Hamid Mir survived the serious scandal surrounding him with regards to the death of Khalid Khwaja, mainly because one of the key players in that saga, Usman Punjabi (the man Mir allegedly had that phone conversation with), was later on killed in a drone attack. In all propriety, Geo management should have taken him off air pending investigations, but apparent criminal behaviour is obviously not as big a problem for them as ratings drops. Now, however, Mir must be a worried man for entirely different reasons.

Media Musical Chairs

There is such a frenetic game of musical chairs going on in the media these days that we can hardly keep up. So we decided to just do a short post, combining all the major transitions we do know about or have heard about...

First up, rumours are swirling that Fahd Hussain, who recently left Express TV to join Dunya, may be signing up with Aaj TV, where Talat Hussain recently announced his departure. According to this website, Fahd has been involved in some clashes with Dunya TV's owner Mian Aamir Mahmood and is also finding it frustrating not to yet have found a primetime slot there. We do not know how true these particular reports are but Fahd himself apparently refuses to either confirm or deny the rumours of negotiations with Aaj, which might be some sort of indication.

Matters are complicated by further rumours that Talat Hussain's apparent move to DawnNews may have hit snags over his desire to bring with him about half a dozen other subordinates at fairly high salaries, at which DawnNews management has balked. There are also reports that Aaj management is going full throttle to retain Talat by offering to address the issues he had with the channel. If indeed either or both of these reports are true, and Talat does in fact stay at Aaj, obviously there would not be any empty slot for Fahd to move into.

In any case, that's enough of the rumours. What is certain are the following:

Sana Bucha, the host of Crisis Cell who recently resigned from Geo to go to ARY, is coming back to Geo, believe it or not. Apparently, she began having doubts about her move to ARY almost immediately upon signing up with them, realizing (a bit late) that she would be reporting to one President Dr S&M there. Even before she had formally begun work there, however, she therefore allowed herself to be poached by the Express Media Group. This is when it got even more interesting. Having signed up with Express (in what capacity, whether for the Express Tribune or for their channels, we are not quite sure), she was beseeched by a rather dramatic Mir Ibrahim Rahman (MIR) to come back to the Geo fold. Apparently she was put under a lot of family pressure (the Rahmans know her family) and finally buckled on the condition that MIR would handle the embarrassment with the Express management. In this short, almost virtual job hopping spree, it is said that she managed to come back to Geo at double her previous salary. A good strategy if you can swing it.

Meanwhile, from the looks of this return, the negotiations that Geo was having with Meher Bokhari (which have been confirmed) to wean her away from Samaa, seem to have come to naught.

But Geo has managed to snag one other big fish, so to speak. As we reported earlier (in rumour terms), Dr Shahista Wahidi is all set to take over the morning show at Geo, replacing the once-favoured Nadia Khan. Wahidi has left ARY and scooted over to Geo's welcoming arms at a whopping salary. Her stint will begin anon.

In already established news, Zaffar Abbas has formally taken over (on October 4) as Editor Dawn from the departing Abbas Nasir, who has moved back to London with his family after four-years at the helm of the paper. And Aaj TV has introduced former bureaucrat and columnist Orya Maqbool Jan and former The News editor Salim Bokhari as the bickering replacements for Mushtaq Minhas and Nusrat Javed in their Bolta Pakistan programme. The latter duo, as we all know, now bicker over at Dunya TV on Dunya Mere Aagay.

On an unrelated note, Arif Nizami's Pakistan Today is now said to launch today (October 5) in Lahore and, interestingly, will be published in the tabloid format, making it the country's first such daily.

Cats Out of the Bag

Some real breaking news in the media for you.

Sana Bucha, the host of Geo's Crisis Cell, has resigned from Geo and joined ARY. Obviously this means that her programme, which should have been airing tonight even as I write this, will not be broadcast.

Sana Bucha: out of her Cell

But perhaps much more intriguing are the reasons for her departure. Two of the more obvious ones are that Bucha had been offered more money by ARY and that since her husband (she recently got married) also works for Geo's Corporate Affairs division, she decided to make her exit before any administrative issue put the couple in a difficult position.

But insiders are saying one of the reasons is also Geo's attempts to lure Samaa TV's Meher Bokhari to Geo. Rumours of a bidding war involving Bokhari had been doing the rounds for some time, though Geo officials dismissed them as planted by Bokhari herself to increase her cache. The rumours were obviously credible enough, however, for Bucha, who it is said does not have a particularly soft spot for her television rival.

Meher Bokhari: being bid upon?

Incidentally, unconfirmed rumours are also circulating about Geo attempting to lure Dr. Shahista Wahidi, the host of ARY's top-rated morning show and whose brother Sahir Lodhi is now already doing a show on Geo. She, it is said, would replace the once-top rated Nadia Khan.

Jaahil Offline, Enter Super King

You can generally tell where a media organization is headed by the kind of people it hires in a moment of crisis. And ARY - which has really suffered in the last year or so because of competition from newer channels like Dunya and Express - really seems to be plumbing the depths to snag the worst "talent" on offer on Pakistani television.




As if appointing conspiracy nutcase Dr S&M as President of the network were not scraping the barrel enough, ARY's latest "golden catch" is the amazingly insufferable Aamir Liaquat Hussain, formerly of Jaahil Online and currently spending his gap weeks selling ghee. The Haji seths of ARY seem to think the way to get Geo's viewership is to buy off their nutcases. (I wait with bated breath for Saleh Zaafir to make the transition.) The publicity hungry fake doc will begin his stint on the network in Ramzan.

Offline, but a jaahil nonetheless

But perhaps even more intriguing is how Geo managed to rid itself of the poisonous buffoon.

According to inside sources, there had been an ongoing tussle for quite some time between Geo owner Mir Shakilur Rahman (MSR) and his Karachi American School- and Babson College-educated son Mir Ibrahim Rahman (MIR) over Mr Jaahil himself. Mir Ibrahim was said to have been incensed particularly after Aamir Liaquat called Ahmadis wajib-ul-qatl (liable to be killed) on his programme and the strong denunciation that followed from civil society. However, MSR, for reasons best known to him, resisted his son's plea to remove him from the channel. In many matters of business, MSR just did not think the young MIR was experienced enough.

A couple of things seem to have made MSR finally relent. One was his discovery that Aamir Liaquat - who apparently used to snivel for raises every six months or so - was in negotiations with ARY. Secondly, the ratings of Jaahil Online had actually plummeted in the past few months, which made cutting ties relatively painless business-wise. A tangential element in the whole episode was probably that MIR, who had gone away for a year for an MBA a Masters in Public Administration course at Harvard, had come back and made his dad uber-proud with his achievements, the evidence for which was the almost full page of The News and Jang devoted to MIR's praise and graduation speech, among other things (nice to own newspapers, isn't it?). Simply put, son had earned the right to have his way.

Whatever the reasons for throwing a charlatan out, I guess better late than ever.

Meanwhile, guess who takes over Aamir Liaquat's duties to make money for Geo during special Ramzan iftar broadcasts? Believe it or not, host-of-his-own-show on both television and radio cum washing powder seller extraordinaire to housewives, Sahir Lodhi. In addition to being the brother of Dr Shahista Wahidi (the host of the morning transmission on ARY Digital) and thinking of himself as Shah Rukh Khan, this is how his biography on his own website describes Lodhi:

"Sahir heart throb of millions of people. Glittering face of Pakistan has a fan frenzy appearance, He is successful but his success story is as same as any run-of-the-mill around. Once while interacting with young students at a school ceremony, he expressed, “I pray for you all that one day you become Sahir Lodhi or better…” Sahir always articulates common man’s language. Over his life, he has always believed in making so many people one people. His fans, not cynically or ironically but with fervent and zealous love, refer to him as a Super King."

Super King Aalim Online?

Well, Super King seems to fulfil at least the super-size ego criteria that Geo's Ramzan programming hosts seem to need to satisfy. Seriously though, bizarre as it may sound, Sahir Lodhi's Jay Leno-inspired show on TV One has apparently one of the top ratings for its time slot. Could this be the precursor for a permanent shift to Geo? Can he manage to get the daagh on (at least some of) Geo's religious programming out as easily as he did while selling Ariel in the streets?

Meanwhile, even as Super King gives his Geo screen test, the search is on for a replacement for the programme now without a host. Some interesting (read: out of the box) names are also apparently in the mix. Watch this space.