It seems to be that IBC Tamil Radio is going to launch a Tamil TV-station. No official announcement has been made by IBC Tamil yet, but a recent poster about their musical show "Pattukku Pattu" in association with Lebara Mobile showed a "IBC TV" logo in the top right corner. When we contacted IBC today a staff told us that the IBC management maybe was considering about launching a Tamil TV-station in the near future, but that nothing has been confirmed yet.

But Media Asia has discovered that a domain name called "www.ibctamil.tv" has been registered by Sathy Media Ltd. (previous owner of IBC Tamil) in 12-07-2010 and updated on 17-07-2014. A facebook page has also been created to IBC TV on: https://www.facebook.com/ibctamiltv where a poster links to IBC & Lebara's "Golden Voice" competition show. 

In the beginning where TRT Tamil Ozhi TV was the only 24 H Tamil TV-station in Europe, IBC Tamil had plans of launching a TV-station, but later it got unnecessary because a new management merged IBC & TRT in 2000 and  renamed TRT Tamil Ozhi to TTN Tamil Ozhi. TTN Tamil Ozhi was later closed down in 2007 due to pressure from the Sri Lankan government on French authorities to close down a pro-Eelam channel, and when Sri Lanka brutally ended the civil war in 2009 much happend in the management of IBC. 

Today it seems to be that old ties are no longer existing as both TTN (that has returned again as IPTV) and IBC are not working together. 

Recently some IBC presenters (Para Prabha, Sumathi Sureshan, SK Rajan etc.) also joined Deepam TV, but the cooperation didn't work, so they left Deepam TV again. 

Our sources has told us that some well-known presenters are going to join the new IBC TV, and that Lebara Group is supporting the initiative. Already Lyca Group is running a TV-station called Athavan TV, so it seems to be that Lebara will compete with them in the radio/TV-field through IBC. 

It will be interesting to see if the name of the channel will be "IBC TV" or if they will choose a good Tamil name like existing channels like Deepam TV/Athavan TV etc. Somehow it's sad that there isn't any cooperation between the new managament of Deepam TV and IBC to gather the wellknown presenters in one channel and run a powerfull Eelam media in the radio/TV/IPTV-field. 

Keep an eye on Media Asia website for any further information about this rumour in the future. 

- Media Asia