Sun Rising & the Rising Sun

Sun TV is going public. The current bull run in the stock markets has attracted the media-shy media mogul, Kalanidhi Maran to raise a few hundred crores to fund his expansion plans. Maran is an ambitious man. Having established a formidable media empire across the four states in South India, he is now spreading his wings to FM Radio and the Tamil newspaper market as well. Whilst his need to fund new businesses is genuine, the key question is - why now?

Sun TV is a Rs 300 crore company with a bottomline of just under Rs 100 crore. That makes him one of the most profitable media enterprises in the country. His success in the in the print media business is still under test. The turnaround of Kungumam, a Tamil weekly mag, ever since Maran actively took control of, is nothing short of spectacular. This magazine has registered the fastest growth in the country, that’s according to the National Readership Survey for 2005. And now, Maran has created a stir in the newspaper market by acquiring and re-launching the venerable Dinakaran, a tamil news daily, by selling it at a cover price of Re 1. And with 41 FM radio licenses under his belt, Maran can be expected to fuel some action in the airwaves as well.

But that’s not half as exciting as the politics behind this public issue. Tamil Nadu is perhaps the only state in the country where ownership of media has always had close links with political establishments. Maran is Karunanidhi's grand nephew. The initial corpus for Sun TV came from the DMK. Even today, the channel is housed at the Anna Arivalayam, the headquarters of the DMK. The success of his network, particularly the on-ground cable distribution owes its growth to the grassroot strength of the DMK. Maran is what he is because of the DMK’s handholding in his early years. Credit him with business acumen, but his political moorings are too close for his own comfort. MDMK’s Vaiko has chosen to focus on Sun TV’s “illegitimate” rise and make it an election issue this time. Jayalalithaa has already formulated a law to take over cable distribution in the State. The bill is awaiting the Governor’s approval.

So if the DMK wins, Maran’s business empire can continue to grow at the scorching pace that it has and perhaps even look beyond the Vindhyas. If it does not, Maran will face the heat from the Jaya-Vaiko combine. And then, he would need a war chest to take them on since the party’s coffers would be empty post-election. To fill that war chest he needs money. Now. That’s why this public issue. The future rise of Sun TV will all depend on the electoral prospects of The Rising Sun.