Viacom18 forays into the Tamil market; announces launch of Colors Tamil

When Viacom18, chief executive officer Sudhanshu Vats in an interview with afaqs reporter said the network will both widen and deepen its regional presence he certainly had a plan. The boradcast conglomerate today announced the upcoming launch of its seventh Regional General Entertainment brand - Colors Tamil. The network plans to launch the channel in Q4, calendar year 2017 (October, November, December)

Viacom18 operates GECs in the Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Odia and Bangla markets. The network has been bullish on the future prospect of regional entertainment and had launched a second GEC - COLORS Super - in the Kannada market, in July, 2016.

Vats says in a media statement, "Driving Regional aggressively is one of our foremost strategic thrusts. Given that almost 60 per cent of our country speaks in regional languages and this market is under-indexed on television, it is imperative that this segment will continue to grow rapidly in the years ahead. While Colors Super was aimed at deepening our presence in the Kannada genre where Colors Kannada is an undisputed leader, the launch of Colors Tamil is a step towards widening our reach in regional markets by entering the largest regional market in the country. The Tamil content market is highly competitive and well-primed for disruption, making this the opportune time for our entry. We look forward to delighting the Tamil content aficionado with the latest offering from the house of Viacom18."

Currently as it stands Sun TV leads the Tamil market with 1041687 impressions (BARC India Week 16: Saturday, 15th April 2017 to Friday, 21st April 2017) followed by KTV with 327391 impressions. Star Vijay, Zee Tamil and Polimer are the other three channels among the top five in the market.