Cong's Jaihind TV to join Kerala channel war

The Congress party is set to launch a Malayalam television channel""Jaihind. This is being seen as an attempt to challenge the CPI(M)'s hegemony of the air waves in Kerala. It will be followed by channels in Kannada and Telugu.

The venture is funded by a Dubai-based Indian tycoon and the party's overseas admirers.

UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi will launch the channel on August 14""the first day of Kerala's new year 'Chingum'.

Ramesh Chennithala, a senior Congress leader and chairman of the Jaihind Television, said, "The CPI(M) already has three popular channels""Kairali, We TV and People""in Kerala and it would be disastrous if we sit back idly.''

The channel will be promoted as a family channel. Sixty per cent of the channel content will be entertainment and 40 per cent news.

Given the Congress party's failures at managing in-house historic ventures like The National Herald, the English newspaper founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, there is scepticism about the viability of the new channel.

However, party leaders says that the difference this time is the huge investments made by NRIs, who are interested in running it professionally.

Jaihind will be managed by Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee-owned, Jaihind Company and Bharat Broadcasting Network (BBN), owned by Aniyankutti, a Dubai-based shipping tycoon.

The Jaihind Company will have a 51 per cent stake. BBN and some US-based individual NRI investors have 25 per cent stake in Jaihind.

Aniyankutti, who was present on the formal launch of Jaihind's national bureau here today, told Business Standard: "We have a blueprint to make Jaihind commercially viable in three years." He said that a national channel was also in the pipeline.

The fact that Kerala already has about 15 television channels did not seem to deter the BBN chairman.

"There is a huge market that could be tapped provided we run the channel professionally,'' he said.

Although, the Congress will have a say in running the channel, Chennithala said Jaihind cannot be run as a partisan news channel as a politically-conscious society like Kerala would simply reject it. He added the channel would have to be independent in editorial thought and content "simply because that is the mantra for success".

Sources in the All India Congress committee said Jaihind-Kerala was being visualised as a pilot project for launch of a national channel - in Hindi and English - and also in other languages.

"Tamil, for the time being, is not on the list since Tamil Nadu is already an over-saturated market with all political parties running their own channels,'' sources said.

Apart from Jaya TV-owned by AIADMK leader Jayalalithaa and till recently, Sun TV, Tamil Nadu has long had a tradition of parties using TV as a means of political propaganda.

During the last Lok Sabha elections, even the cable operators in various localities and small towns in UP offered TV time to candidates to spread their message. A whole host of channels ""Moon TV, in Agra, for instance ""sprang up overnight.

In Andhra pradesh, newspaper chains like Eenadu and Deccan Chronicle have in the past, functioned as vehicles of political parties. Jaihind had kicked off a row within the party in Kerala even before it came into being.

The Information and Broadcasting ministry had withheld permission for its launch as anonymous letters purportedly sent by disgruntled Congressmen in Kerala""questioning the credentials of investors began pouring in.