CBC News announced Tuesday the appointment of Prasanna Rajagopalan as the new senior managing director for CBC’s Ontario region.
Most recently the director of journalism and programming for CBC Toronto, Rajagopalan will begin his new role on Monday, March 10. As senior managing director for Ontario, he will work closely with managing editors and the next (yet-to-be-announced) CBC Toronto leader to oversee all strategy, programs, teams and stations across the province in Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Kitchener, Waterloo and Windsor, as well as community locations and future operations in St. Catharines, Oshawa and Sault Ste. Marie, a CBC press release said. (Last month, CBC announced it was hiring new journalists for the latter three locations as part of its expansion of local news coverage across the country.)
“Journalism has always been about evolving to meet the needs of audiences, and CBC News is meeting these changing needs in Ontario,” Rajagopalan said in CBC’s press release. “Our commitment to robust public service journalism is evident in the coming launch of three new bureaus to serve the communities of Oshawa, St. Catharines and Sault Ste. Marie, as well as the recent launch of three new streaming channels serving the Greater Toronto Area, Ottawa and Windsor. I’m grateful for the opportunity to continue to represent and collaborate with communities across Ontario.”
“Prasanna brings to this important job a genuine appreciation of the value of local journalism and community engagement in Ontario, and a vision for how best to serve future audiences in our dynamic media ecosystem,” Brodie Fenlon, general manager and editor in chief of CBC News, said in a statement.
Rajagopalan began his career at CBC as a video encoder working weekend nights in Toronto, before becoming a CBC Toronto web writer where he helped cover Rob Ford’s mayoralty. In 2013, he left Toronto to become the first executive producer of the then-new CBC Kitchener-Waterloo station. He later returned to CBC in Toronto to oversee its digital transformation, and then he spent four years working closely with CBC’s Digital Strategy and Product department, “where he honed a data-driven approach to breaking down complex challenges and leading through influence across a diverse array of teams,” the CBC press release says.
In his role as director of journalism and programming for CBC Toronto, Rajagopalan and his team in recent months launched one of CBC News’ first local streaming channels, CBC News Toronto; maintained the No. 1 weekday morning radio program in the city, Metro Morning, and the No. 1 weekend morning radio program in the province, Fresh Air; significantly increased morning video production; and scaled up audience listening to ensure more representative journalism, as well as the strategic deployment of community bureaus, according to the press release.
Photo of Prasanna Rajagopalan courtesy of CBC
