Chennai's Raj TV to launch Kannada music, news channels

Chennai Feb 21 : The Rupees.586-million (Rupees.58.6-crore) Raj Television Network - the second largest Tamil satellite television company - is foraying into the Kannada language market with a music and a news channel.

The company is going slow on its plans to start a Telugu news channel, while the group company's general entertainment channel in the same language is set for a makeover.

"The Kannada music channel will go on air next month while the Kannada news channel will be launched in April," Raj TV programme director M. Ravindran told IANS.

The Raj Musix Kannada will be the company's second music channel after its Tamil music channel launched last year. The company had announced plans to launch similar channels in Malayalam and Telugu.

It will also be the third Kannada music channel after SS Music and U2 from the Sun TV Network.

According to Ravindran, the Kannada music and news channels are expected to break even in three years.

Last year, the company had announced a Rs.40-million (Rs.4-crore) investment for the four music channels, and hopes to earn Rs.5 million per month as advertisement revenues.

Speaking about plans surrounding the Telugu news channel, Ravindran said: "The Telugu news channel market is currently cluttered with nearly 10 channels. Our plans will be finalised some time next fiscal."

He also said Raj TV's Telugu entertainment channel, Vissa, will be re-launched with new programmes and game shows.

Though the Tamil satellite channel market is buzzing with the launch of two comedy channels (Adithya from Sun TV and Siripolli from Kalaignar TV), Ravindran ruled out any such plans from Raj TV.

"The Sun TV and the Kalaignar TV group have the advantage of owning a cable distribution network. A competing channel will be slotted in the non-prime band," he explained.

In fact, this is a problem being faced by all the four channels under the Raj TV banner.

Raj TV is expected to close the current financial year with near flat topline growth while its bottomline might go down a bit as compared to the previous year owing to the increased costs.