All of us(Indians) are aware that M.Karunaanidhi, the current chief minister of Tamilnadu is one of the biggest evil forces in the country, but even more evil are the sons of Murasoli Maran, Kalanidhi and Dhayaanidhi Maran.
Is Karunaanidhi so benevolent to forget the brothers who grew their so-called kingdom because of him, calling his son a "rowdy" on a television channel? No way. The truth is that Karunaadhi was scared. Karunaanidhi, who gathered the cabinet when there was a tiff between him and the brothers and decided to ask Dhayaanidhi Maran to resifn from his post as a minister, failed to do the same when he chose to unite with thw brothers. When asked about the spectrum scam, he brushed it aside saying it was all of the past.
After this election, Karunaanidhi will be exhausted(old age) and those who tried to please him by organizing various functions are going to leave his side. His dear Jaffer Sate has already lost power. The implications, Karunaanidhi is no more going to be a threat, but the brothers who have seen a huge growth will.
Who is Kalanidhi Maaran? He studied in Don Bosco school in Chennai, under-grad at Loyola College and did MBA at the US. After returning to India, he worked for a brief period at "Kungumam".
India Today, then started a new video journal called "News Track". He wanted to do something similar to it and hence started "Poomalai", which was a video cassette that came twice a month. Karunaanidhi's force was acting behind this. Since it didn't have share-holders like News Track, all the video stores in Chennai were threatened to buy atleast 10 cassettes. Cases were filed on those who failed to buy, saying they sold "blue-film" cassettes.
Once they were financially sound, "Sun Tv" was started in 1993. In those times transponders were not as cheap as they are today. These days with one crore rupees, one could start a TV channel. There was a relative of Brunei Sultan who lived in Chennai and owned a transponder. Kalanidhi befriended him and received his transponder for free.
The reason why Sun Tv became very popular soon after its inception was that, not many TV channels were available then. Also, there was no compromise on the quality of the programmes. There were no tele-shopping or fake-doctors' shows. Until 1996, since there was a lot of corruption during Jayalalitha's reign, people wanted an opposition channel that would reveal a lot of insider news from the ruling party, which Sun Tv did very promptly. Rabi Bernard, who is with Jaya Tv now, was with Sun Tv then. More than a couple of important news about the ruling party used to be telecasted.
September 7, 1995 saw the wedding of Jayalalitha's foster son Sudhakaran with great pomp and show and the news in Sun Tv had great reception from the viewers, as it included details like stealing current from the transformers, threatening officers, etc. The way in which Jayalalitha ana Sasikala clad in silk clothes and lots of gold jewelry walked during the weddinng ceremony, with the police officer Walter Devaram as a security for them and lots of others with guns, was shot from the top on Malar Hospital building by Sun Tv camera man, Kannan.
Kannan was arrested by DGP Vijayakumar, and Sun Tv made a big issue of it by taking it up with the then Prime Minister Shankar Dayal Sharma and the internal affairs minister S.P. Chavan.
After 1996, Sun Tv became very powerful. They started threatening film actors and actresses to star in their serials, and private ad agencies to create ads for them. They had their office at Arivaalayam, but eventually occupied the whole Arivaalayam by forcing the MLA Gandhi to vacate.
Another major company of theirs was Sumangali Cable Vision(SCV) at Chennai first. Their competitor was another cable operator called "Hathway" from Mumbai. After 2006, due to Karunadhi's power, they forced Hathway out of business in Tamilnadu.
By this period, Dhayanidhi Maran became the minister for Communication and Information Technology and Sun Tv started using his powers to expand their cable business empire. Raj Tv(Visa in Telugu) and Vijay Tv were known to telecast un-biased news then, so Dhayanidhi made sure that their right to news telecast was revoked. It is to be noted that Vijay Tv doesn't telecast news till date.
...to be continued...
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