When the country’s first satellite television channel
in Malayalam was being set up more than 20 years ago, Thiruvananthapuram
seemed to be the best location for its headquarters. The State capital,
with the Legislative Assembly and the Secretariat, was where the
political news happened. The presence of the Kerala State Film
Development Corporation and the Soorya festival also contributed to the
cultural growth of Thiruvananthapuram, making it an ideal location for
upcoming television channels of the early 90s.
“Thiruvananathapuram
was the obvious choice because it is a political place,” says
journalist Sashi Kumar, who launched Asianet channel in 1993. Later,
other television channels such as Surya also came up in the city.
The
television industry in the State soon moved from the political capital
to the commercial capital — Kochi. Indiavision, the first 24x7 Malayalam
news channel, set the trend when it began broadcast from its studio at
Padivattom in Kochi in 2003. At the helm of the television channel was
M.K. Muneer, the then Minister for Public Works.
Technology,
says Dr. Muneer, was the main reason his team decided to start the
channel in Kochi and not Thiruvananthapuram. “There were clear
indications that Kochi was going to be the hub for IT in the State. The
news may happen in Thiruvananthapuram, but the technology update would
first happen in Kochi.” While plans were being made to set up
Indiavision channel, work on an undersea cable linking Kochi to the
world was also under way. High bandwidth undersea cables linking South
East Asia, the Gulf countries, and Western Europe reach India at two
locations — Mumbai and Kochi. “With the new cables, the channel could go
easily from Kochi to other countries of the world,” Dr. Muneer says.
The challenge for the channel was to bring news from different parts of
the State to its studio in Kochi. “We accomplished that by bringing the
OB (Outdoor Broadcasting) van to Kerala for the first time. We had one
in Thiruvananthapuram and another in Kozhikode to bring us the latest
developments,” he says.
Other television channels
soon recognised the potential of Kochi and started setting up shop in
the city. Most television channels in the State — Jeevan TV, Manorama
News, Reporter, We, Amrita TV, Mathrubhumi, and Doordarshan – are today
either based in Kochi or have major studios there.
Modern
broadcast technology made it possible for a television channel to
create content from anywhere in the State and broadcast it to a wide
audience, no matter where the studio is located. Despite these
possibilities, most new television channels in the State chose to make
Kochi their home.
The commercial expansion of the
city is the reason TV channels headed for its shores, says Mr. Sashi
Kumar, currently the chairman of Media Development Foundation and Asian
College of Journalism in Chennai. The move to Kochi indicates a shift in
the priorities of the television industry, he says. “There has been a
paradigm shift and commerce, rather than artistic or editorial
considerations, has become the driving force of television.”
As
the film industry shifted from Chennai to Kochi, entertainment channels
too sprouted up in the city, which became the hub for news studios,
tele-serial shootings, and entertainment programmes.
Looking
back over the last 20 years, Dr. Muneer feels the channel made the
right choice when it decided to make Kochi its home. “Even for the next
20 years, I think the city will be very important for the television
industry,” he says.
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