Thread by @ikkmurugan

Family First always for DMK

Sun Network’s Profit after Tax grew from ₹269 Crores to ₹772 Crores during 5 years of DMK rule between 2006 and 2011.

The promoters (DMK family) own 77% stake in this company. (1/n)

2006, It was AIADMK leading in the pre poll analysis before the DMK’s Manifesto came out. Three main Poll promises: Free TV, 2 Acre land for every landless farmer & Farm loan waiver. I had already published on the farm loan waiver, Lands were never given, TV time now! (2/n)

DMK fulfilled their Poll promise of Free television Costing the exchequer ₹3687 Cr. TVs were even distributed to households which hasn’t received electricity. Anyways TV is not a commodity which has a shelf life. So it is still fine to burn ₹2.5 Crores in this process. (3/n)

SCV (Sun Network’s Cable company) was launched in 1996, before the end of 2001 SCV had already captured 80% market share and pushing Hathway to just 20%. Before leaving office in 2006, AIADMK tried regulating cable network but wasn’t successful. (4/n)

SCV was on a Bullish run but the cable revenues wasn’t lucrative. It was insignificant even in 2011 contributing to just 4% of total revenue of Sun Network. But the ₹3742 Freebie program on tax payer’s cost proved a worthy bet for DMK. (5/n)

Karunanidhi & the Marans had a fall out during this period. Karunanidhi even went out to say “some Multi system operators are exploiting the local cable operators” and started the Arasu cable TV to teach the Marans a lesson. (6/n)

Even before the steam due to the feud could settle the family patched up putting the Arasu cable project in the bunker. Hathway which sprung back due to this feud Said bye to TN market in 2010 after suffering huge losses. SCV suffered losses during the period of family feud (7/n)

While Arasu Cable incurred 8.11 Crores losses in the first 3 years, Sun Network reach new highs in Profits. The very purpose of Arasu cable TV was to curb monopolistic nature of the DMK family member. All it took was a little patch up for Sun to continue shining (8/n)

Net Profit Margin of Sun TV stood at 45% unlike that of their industry competitor which was between 14 to 20%. Increase in subscribers (Virtue of the free television) contributed to this abnormal rise. (9/n)

For 3 years SCV controlled channel placements and even channels which can be Aired by the cable operators. Couple of Raj TV channels and Jaya plus never featured in their channel list. Even Polimer news was blacked out in Coimbatore area in 2011 without any prior info (10/n)

2009 to 2011 was a year with the increase in subscribers due to free TV and skyrocketed advertisement revenue advantage drawn by Sun network channels in TN for the advantage they had on channel black outs and channel placing thru SCV (11/n)

From ₹77 Crores to ₹772 Crores Profits in 6 years. The cost the exchequer paid was ₹3687 Crores + The investment & losses incurred By Arasu Cable TV. Don’t fall for Freebies people!