MindShare Chennai wins media duties for Sun Direct TV

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Tuesday - Aug 26, 2008
Televisionpoint.com Correspondent | Chennai

MindShare Chennai has won the media buying and planning duties for the Sun Direct TV Pvt Ltd, the direct-to-home (DTH) service from Sun TV Network. MindShare Chennai already handles Sun Group's Tamil daily Dinakaran and the FM radio brand SFM.

The size of the Sun Direct TV business is estimated to be worth Rs 120 crore, of which, 60 per cent goes to mainline advertising, while the remaining 40 per cent would be lined up for the below-the-line (BTL) activities.

McCann Erickson Chennai has recently won the creative duties of Sun Direct TV, which is an 80:20 DTH joint venture between the Kalanidhi Maran family owned Sun TV Network and Malaysia's Astro Group.

Televisionpoint.com had earlier reported that Sun Direct TV, which has crossed one million subscribers in 200 days, predicts to double its subscriber base to two million subscribers, by the time the company celebrates its first anniversary. The subscribers of Sun Direct TV are currently spread across Tamil Nadu in a 60:40 rural urban ratio, and in the coming days the company will be spreading its wings across the country.

The DTH market already has four private players: the Zee group's Dish TV, the Tata-Star joint venture, Tata Sky, Reliance Communications' Big TV and Sun TV's Sun Direct TV; in addition, there's the state owned DD Direct.

According to UBS estimates, the DTH industry's revenue size is expected to grow from Rs 3,800 crore to approximately Rs 40,000 crore. As also, C&S subscribers is to grow from 5.9 crore (in 2007) to 7.7 crore in (2010), and DTH subscribers will grow from 35 lakh (2007) to 1.1 crore (2010).