NEW DELHI: The Raghav Bahl-promoted Television Eighteen Ltd has roped in a star anchor, Shireen, for its proposed Hindi business news channel.     

According to broadcast industry sources, Shireen will be joining TV-18 on 1 December and would be part of the Hindi channel head Sanjay Pugalia's core team.

The sources also indicated that Shireen, a bilingual anchor, could be used for the existing English language business news channel, CNBC-TV 18, too.

Television Eighteen, on the brink of executing a fairly big expansion plan, is expected to make some other top line anchor-acquisitions.

Both Shireen and TV-18 were not available for comments.

In a development that cannot be stated as being directly related, former Sahara Samay national news channel head Arup Ghosh is slated to join Jagran TV as director of news. This proposed Hindi news channel, is being promoted by Uttar Pradesh- based Dainik Jagran group of newspapers.

Speaking to indiantelvision.com, Jagran TV director Siddharth Gupta said, "Arup Ghosh is a fine acquisition. With his experience, he would be able to give the right sort of guidance that the (proposed) news channel needs."

Jagran's yet-to-be named news channel will be uplinked through an Insat satellite from Kabuki studios, located in Film City on the outskirts of Delhi. The channel is expected to go on air towards the latter half of the first quarter 2005.

According to Ghosh, who signed the new contract today, Jagran group is a dynamic one and together the endeavour would be to give a "refreshingly new dimension" to television news.

Both Ghosh and Shireen recently quit Sahara group's news channel venture after almost three years at the helm of affairs. Shireen was supposed to head a National Capital Region (NCR)-specific news channel from the Sahara stable that has not seen the light of the day as yet. With her departure, the project is understood to have been put in the backburner.