Islamabad: An Appeal from an old colleague Arslan Khan former head of MP department Geo Television.
Once upon time there was a Current Affairs Department in Geo Television. The responsibility of this department was to produce Current Affairs programs, documentaries and special projects following normal production norms. There were many layers before production was gone out of department for broadcasting. There were checks and balances at every level. Research was done and rechecked—script was written and rechecked—product was ready reviewed by many teams of producers—editing reproduction etc etc etc This is same time when there was a Product management department that ensured support to all productions. There was quality management wing etc etc etc . All such rubbish and useless department were closed down by former Managing Director of Geo News— calling these departments Non –productive. He used to say anchorpersons are enough to handle their shows and what for research? What for scripting or making rundowns of the shows? What for producers? Who are producers? Who is researcher they are useless creatures. The ultimate result had been seen by the whole country—-Shaista Lodhi show. Production system was totally changed in Geo after throwing away a lot of producers, project managers, products managers etc etc. More than 100 senior production people were thrown away from organisation because organisation needed budget cut to adjust heavy weights coming with 2 million and 3 million and some 5 million salary packages per month. In this hurricane one of the core professional person Arslan Khan who was head of PM department also lost his job or was to tendered resignation. He is same Arslan Khan who has arranged a Dawa session outside Geo building Karachi on May 23 to show solidarity with his previous organisation because he believes that banning Geo would be a disaster for thousands of workers whose bread and butter is their job in Geo and Jang group.
If Geo has done some mistake it should be answerable to court of law and and court of Allah because no one is bigger than Law of Land and nobody has right to do anything against the norms of Islam that is the greatest religion on earth.
When I saw appeal from Arslan Khan I found his telephone number with this poster he posed in facebook and twitter. I called him and talked to him. I am sharing his feelings with you:
Arslan said:
Sacking professional people from Geo was a conspiracy against the organisation but owners did not understand this conspiracy because they had blind faith on former MD who is now coming with new channel soon. Geo was not raised in one day but tactfully and systematically core production team that raised the Geo was thrown away from organisation. This is not a fault of owners but this is fault of their judgement of trusting people and depending upon junior team who does not know anything about content, production and norms of journalism and this team is just a TRP halagula team. Anyhow that is an old story and now our former organisation needs us and we all should sand outside Geo building and prayer for its survival on May 23 after Juma prayer.
