Chennai: The Chennai Media job market is buzzing with one hot topic for the past couple of weeks. It is all about the hiring for the top positions for the upcoming Tamil GEC from Viacom18, which might be named by default as Colors Tamil.
Many calls landed to tvnews4u.com also to verify the veracity of the news and few even wanted to know the contacts of people involved in hiring. When we approached the Viacom18 sources through our correspondents, we got a reply from a source which doesn’t want to deny the fact, But, refused to confirm too.
When we explored the market sources, the unconfirmed sources revealed that Viacom18 has hired a senior person, who was the former Channel Head of a Tamil Channel, owned by a Mumbai based Broadcast Network. The sources also stated that he is involved in hiring people under him and he is negotiating with many top level people in other Broadcast Networks.
It is also understood from another source that Viacom18 is considering an acquisition of existing channel rather than launching a new one.
Tamil Nadu market is witnessing a dry business atmosphere due to lack of competing atmosphere among channels after the launch of BARC Ratings, which did not show any major shift in audience viewing pattern, when compared with the pattern of TAM and the dominance of Sun TV Network has forced others to think of consolidation. This in-fact reduced the price of satellite rights of Tamil Movies as many of them stopped acquiring movies and started consolidating their business.
The entry of Viacom18 is eagerly awaited by the market as the same will trigger some kind of competition among the Tamil Entertainment channel.
Apparently, Viacom18 is owning Colors Kannada in Karnataka Market, which became the market leader after the change of management from ETV Group. Similarly, Colors Managed to scale up in many other regional markets too. It is yet to have a Tamil and Malayalam GEC in South Market.
As Mr. Rajesh Kamath, the former CEO of Viacom18, unofficially quoted to his friends during the launch of Hindi GEC Colors. “We don’t enter a market with Knifes, Swords or not event rocket launchers….. We come with Missiles with Nukes…… to destroy the enemy….”, Viacom18 is known for its spending for the acquisition of quality content and bringing in big ticket reality properties to attract viewership in short span. In Kannada they introduced Bigg Boss format to revive the fortune of ETV Kannada (Now Colors Kannada).
Last time, when Star Vijay was re-launched in 2002 after Vijay TV was acquired by Star India from UTV in 2001, the market giant Sun Network suppressed it with the launch of secondary Entertainment Channel KTV (later on converted as Movie Channel).
It will interesting see the strategy of both the sides, if the fact that Colors Tamil proposed launch becomes a reality.
Keep watching for more updates on this topic.
