Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
Another news channel in the fray for Kerala
News presenter MV Nikesh Kumar is all set to launch a 24 hour Malayalam news channel called Reporter.
MV Nikesh Kumar, ex-chief executive officer and news presenter of India Vision, a Kerala based news channel, is launching his own 24 hour news channel. The Malayalam channel will be called Reporter and is expected to be launched in March 2011.
Kumar informs that Reporter is expected to go on air before the next assembly polls slated to be held in May 2011. The channel will be available in Kerala and a few other parts of the country. It will also be available in the Gulf, which is a stronghold of Malayalam news channels.
For distribution, the channel is in talks with many local distributors in Kerala.
About Rs 15 crore is going into setting up the channel and Kumar says that the expected monthly ad revenue is Rs 1 crore.
The channel will focus only on hard news, with a little bit of tilt towards feature stories.
Mathrubhumi News, a news channel from the stable of the Mathrubhumi newspaper group, is also expected to be launched at around the same time.
Reporter will face competition from news channels such as Asianet News, Indiavision, People (Kairali) and Manorama News. Another half a dozen channels are also in the pipeline in the same genre. These include channels from Kerala Kaumudi, Madhyamam, Mangalam and one by Janapriya Communications.