Bengaluru: The Kannada Satellite Channel “Kasthuri TV” owned by former Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy and managed by his wife Anitha Kumarasamy had changed hands on a five year lease for all good reasons. The Kannada GEC was not performing all that great due to lack of initiative from the management and poor programming strategy.
The channel currently positioned at No.5 in GEC category generates an average weekly GRP of 50 to 70 against mainstream GEC channels like Udaya TV, Suvarana, ETV Kannada and Zee Kannada fighting for eyeballs anywhere between 250 to 500 GRPs for the top four spots.
Kasthuri Media which owns and operates the Kasthuri TV has leased the channel to White Horse Network Services floated by TV Industry veteran P Kailasam for a period of five years starting from 1st November onwards.
White Horse is responsible for all operations of Kasthuri channel including managing of content and ad sales, except for distribution and channel placement, which will be handled by the owners of the channel’s team, says White Horse managing director Kailasam.
“My game plan is to completely revamp the content from the scratch and make it to the top most position with more thrust on contemporary and current subjects,” added Kailasam.
Kailasam a television industry veteran is a post graduate in Economics, a fellow member of the institute of company secretaries, cost accountant and a law graduate.
He started his career with Indian Express in 1989 and was a company secretary and finance manager in HCL, Delhi. Later, he joined the Hutichsion Whampoa Hong Kong group in its telecom operations as company secretary and country legal manager.
In 2000 he joined the Zee group and exited in the year 2007 as executive VP of southern operations. He joined Atria’s Sunder Raju to form Kable First India. Today, the Rs 700 crore plus Atria is one of the leading MSOs’ and ISPs’ in the areas that it operates.
