SUN TV: A SECOND TAMIL CHANNEL

The southern Indian language TV network, Sun, says it is readying to launch a second channel by 1 February 1999. The Sun Network operates a bouquet of channels in Tamil (Sun TV), Kannada (Udaya TV), Telugu (Gemini) and Malayalam (Surya TV). While Sun TV and Udaya TV are leaders in their respective language categories, Surya TV and Gemini TV are the number 2 in their markets.

Promoter Kalanithi Maran - who is a scion of the ruling DMK political party in Tamil Nadu - told a local daily that he is launching a second channel to suck in the advertising overflow from Sun TV. "We were sticking to five minutes of advertising for every hour on Sun TV," he said. "Rather than let the advertising flow to competitive channels we thought it wiser to start our own." Maran says that the unnamed new channel will have a similar programming mix to Sun TV for now but will be reprogrammed for a specific audience six months or so later.

Meanwhile, rival Tamil political party, AIADMK, chief Jayalalitha is threatening to relaunch JJ TV as Jaya TV now. JJ TV went off the air a couple of years ago when the AIADMK lost at the polls and Jayalalitha was ousted as chief minister of the state of Tamil Nadu.