MUMBAI: The news channel business of the Sahara group is undergoing a revamp after some top level executive reshuffle.

For starters, all the bureaus of the region-specific and national news channels are being merged to bring in more synergy and avoid duplication of responsibilities.

Hence forth, a TV news bureau will not only report for the region specific channels, but also double up for the national channel, Sahara Samay Rashtriya, if need be.

What's more, the print medium bureaus (working for Sahara group's newspapers and weeklies)would also chip in with their bit for the electronic medium venture.

Confirming the development to indiantelevision.com, Sahara's Prabhat Dabral (who holds additional charge of the national news channel after Arup Ghose and Shireen quit) said, "Yes, we have re-organised the Sahara news bureaus and have made it one news gathering system for out print and television endeavours."

Dwelling on the reason for this restructuring, Dabral said the mergers were done to optimise the group's resources. "The aim is to avoid confusion and have more synergy," he added.

So there would be no separate Sahara UP bureau and Sahara Rashtriya bureau as was the case earlier. From now on, all reports would be filed under the tagline Sahara Samachar.

As part of the revamping, the Bihar-specific news channel too is being launched later this month.

Pointing out that a final date for the formal launch has not yet been decided, Dabral said that the channel's dry runs of a few hours has already started with the day-long run starting few days later.

The Bihar channel is being launched to coincide with the elections being held in the state early next year.

At the moment, Sahara has four news channels, including one for Mumbai, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.