Tamil actor-politicians tune in to idiot box

S Ve Sekar, comedian and opposition MLA, will be launching two channels soon.

After a phalanx of political leaders foraying into television channels in Tamil Nadu down the years, actors-turned-politicians are seriously beginning to heed the call of the idiot box.

S Ve Sekar, comedian and opposition MLA who currently represents the AIADMK from Mylapore constituency in the state Assembly, will be launching two channels in the next 8-9 months. The actor thereby signalled his intentions to take a bite of the Rs 2,500-crore television market in the state.

Sekar said that the new channels "" SVE TV and India TV "" will be headquartered in Chennai and will be set up at an investment of around Rs 10 crore. He, however, did not comment much in this regard, saying "everything is in preliminary stage".

SVE TV will feature only humour programmes, while India TV will be a general entertainment channel, he added. The latter will focus on theatre plays and will be more of an interactive channel, apart from being a general entertainment channel.

Sekar's comrade-in-arms, the DMDK president and film actor Vijaykanth, who represents the Vruddachalam constituency, had recently announced that he too would launch a Tamil television channel along with a political magazine by the end of April or early May next year.

ith the two prospective entrants, the total number of channel owners in Tamil Nadu may increase to 10. The Tamil channels which operate currently are Kalaignar TV, Jaya TV, Sun TV, Vijay TV, Raj TV, Makkal TV, Mega TV and Vasanth TV.