NEW DELHI: F Sheheryar, a senior officer of the Indian Broadcasting (Programme) Service will step into the shoes of AIR DG Venkateshwarlu. As reported earlier by Radioandmusic.com, Venkateshwarlu, retired after a service of 26 years. F Sheheryar has been asked to serve as Director General of All India Radio till the next meeting of the Prasar Bharati Board.

The officer was cleared by UPSC and ACC for Senior Administrative Grade in May 2010 and has been functioning as the Additional Director General at the AIR Headquarters.

Sheheryar joined Akashvani and Doordarshan in 1981 in different consequential capacities and later in 1990 became a member of the IB(P)S through the Union Public Service Commission when he was inducted directly in the Senior Time Scale (STS). He was a topper of UPSC on both occasions – when selected as Programme Executive and later on getting inducted into the organised service known as Indian Broadcasting (Programme) Service.

After his selection, he was appointed Station Director of Radio Kashmir Jammu and in that period of extreme militant unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, which included a stiff challenge of countering Pakistan’s fierce indoctrination through their overt and covert radio signals. He was given the additional assignment of launching a local radio station in Poonchh, exactly on the borders of India with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The sheer ingenuity of the counter-propaganda launched in Potohari, Gojri, Urdu etc. over Poonchh lay in initiating psychological operations for national security and defeating disruptive machinations of Pakistan’s ISI through teachings of Quran itself.

After serving in Jammu for six years, the officer was made Station Director of Jalandhar. After serving Jalandhar where he was the Zonal Head, he was moved to Radio Kashmir Srinagar as its Director in 1999 when militancy was at its peak.

The officer served Doordarshan, Jammu, as its Director between October 2001 and April 2003 and DDK, Jalandhar between April 2003 and May 2005 before he was brought to Doordarshan Headquarters in Delhi.

A dyed-in-the-wool professional, he conceived, designed and produced innumerable programmes in varied genres for disparate regions of the country, both at the regional level and the national level and won plaudits as well as prizes. His creative work was often acclaimed as an apotheosis of excellence and won him national and international acclaim, both from the State and the NGOs.

He used changing technology in the dissemination of message right from phone-in-programming to live streaming, analog to digital, studio to field and field to skies, using tools and software for optimum use like smoke, flame and pixel graphics much ahead of his peers in other parts of South Asia. The Officer, with his penchant for perfection and pursuit of excellence, did successful experiments with ideas and genres, devised ways and the modus operandi of presentation endemic to his style and exclusive skills resulting in programmes that adorned shelves of international repositories of software in ABU, AIBD, DW, Rupavahini etc.

His documentaries done in India and dubbed in different non-Indian languages including English on “Why do beggars seek alms: a Psycho-economic Perspective”, “Demise of language and emergence of tongue: in aspect and retrospect”, “religion as a cementing force rather than a schism”, democracy-India’s gift to South Asia and a largesse to the word are among the innumerable inspiring works that won him accolades and applause.

The officer single-handedly launched Doordarshan’s Urdu channel in 2006, as if it was a sleight of hand, when there was neither manpower nor infrastructure provided to him for the task. His professional skill, perseverance, love of the language and dogged pursuit of a goal enabled him to translate a commitment to the Parliament into reality. It is he who created a software bank, when none was available.

He is one of the few Indian programme professionals at a significantly senior level who knows both the mechanics and the aesthetics of the medium of television and is also at home with the nuances of sound-broadcasting. His exposure to domestic and foreign training programmes helped him in honing his skills and in serving Prasar Bharati and his country at large, in the wake of upheavals on the country’s audio-visual landscape.

Click on the link for reading about the retirement of Venkateshwarlu