Screening of Radaan serials to continue on Sun TV for now

The latest question on mind of most television audiences in Tamil Nadu is whether Sun TV will continue to beam 'Selvi' and 'Thanga Vettai' of Radaan Mediaworks with its chairperson Radhika Sarat Kumar joining AIADMK.

According to estimates, 'Selvi', screened five days a week, garners about Rs 9 lakh a day as advertisement revenue aggregating close to Rs 2 crore a month.

The television serial commands about Rs 25,000 as advertisement revenue for a 10-second spot while it is about Rs 20,000 to Rs 22,000 for the game show 'Thanga Vettai' during the weekends. About six minutes (360 seconds) of advertisements are shown during the screening of each episode.

When Rajya Sabha member and her actor-husband Sarath Kumar quit DMK on April 17, Radhika Sarath Kumar reportedly remarked that "It is up to Kalanithi Maran" (the chairman and managing director of Sun TV). She meant to say that it was up to Maran to decide whether to continue the serials of Radaan Mediaworks currently being aired on Sun TV.

A senior official from a media-buying agency, who preferred to be anonymous, said that the Sun Network would continue to telecast the contents of Radaan Mediaworks for the time being but would not be given fresh slots and would stop screening in a matter of months. He also pointed out that any move from Radika Sarath Kumar would be detrimental for Radaan Mediaworks and not for Sun Network.

The reason that Sun Network would not have any financial loss arises from the fact that Radaan Mediaworks sells its advertisement slot through Pearl Media while Sun Network does not sell spot time directly to media-buying agencies.

Sun Network sells every slot in Sun TV to serial-producing companies for specific amount of money and in return provides the companies to choose the commercial rates to be charged ( called as free commercial time). Therefore, the advertisement rates are charged by the companies producing serials depending on the television viewership rating.

The serial production companies will have to recover the cost of production of the serial and money paid for specific time slot to Network only from advertisement revenues. Sun TV does not bear the production cost of the serial.

Incidentally, 'Thanga Vettai' gameshow is parallely done by Radhika Sarat Kumar in Telegu as 'Bangaram Meekosam' for Gemini and by Urvashi in Malayalam as `Swarna Mazha' for Surya channel, the sister channels of Sun TV.

When asked the course of action to be taken by the mediahouse, Kalanithi Maran, chairman and managing director, Sun Network, told Business Standard that, "Sun Network is a corporate entity and therefore the contents of Radaan Mediaworks will continue to be screened."

He pointed out that according to the agreement undertaken by Radhika Sarat Kumar, she will not be able to work for any other rival channel until the programmes of Radaan Mediaworks are screened on Sun Network.

Until television serials are able to garner good viewership in terms of television rating points they will continue to be screened by Sun Network, he added.