`I can do better than read a two-minute bulletin at midnight’

He feels DD News, in its urge to acquire a new look, shouldn’t be happy with just a “plastic surgery”. Newsreaders, he insists, cannot make a transition to being anchors without adequate training. DD News has done just so with Nalin Kohli and Sunit Tandon, who were the only two `casual’ newsreaders who were made anchors, though.

While Singh has offered his services to train anchors, he does have reservations about the selection process. “No one was told what their deficiencies were. Nor were we told what the selection panel and its criteria were. We were just handed our duty charts on February 29. After reading the 10-minute Parliament News on March 2, I sat down to write a note on the deficiencies in the bulletin, and then decided to quit.”

Though he wasn’t officially offered the anchorman’s role (as founder-Managing Director of Sage Publications he has little time for it), Ravindran was given the option — she declined too. Among those who did not meet the grade were Sukanya Balakrishnan and Shivendra Kundra, who it is believed are seeking an appointment with Information and Broadcasting Minister Arun Jaitley to complain about the lack of transparency in the evaluation.

The five Hindi newsreaders who have been asked to do English duty are J V Raman, Mita Chaudhuri, Ghazala Amin, Shubhendu Amitabh, and Manjari Joshi.