G V Krishnamurthy to spearhead Samaya TV

Krishnamurthy has joined the Kannada news channels as business head. His last stint was with Gemini TV as general manager and cluster head for AP channels.

G V Krishnamurthy (fondly known as GVK amongst his peers) has taken the charge of Kannadiga-owned Kannada News Channel, Samaya TV.

He has joined the channel as its business head and will spearhead its growth here on.

At Samaya TV, he will report to chairman R S Murthy and managing director, Manjunath.

Samaya TV has recently been revamped. Krishnamurthy's mandate will include taking care of the revamping and restructuring of the channel. He will also be responsible for the distribution, revenue generation and FPC. He will take care of all the key aspects of the channel including business and content.

Talking about the challenges and opportunities of his new role, Krishnamurthy says, "Samaya TV is at No. 4 right now. My responsibility will be to make it the No. 2 channel in the market soon. I am targeting it to be the leading channel by the next six months. There are also plans of launching new channels in the Kannada market in the coming months. Having said that, it's a volatile market and quite challenging."

Krishnamurthy joins Samaya TV from Sun Network, where he was working as general manager and cluster head, AP channels of Gemini Group channels since April, 2009. He had joined Gemini TV in February, 2008 and was designated as general manager until March, 2009.

His responsibilities at Gemini Group included formulation and strategising business revenues and conceptualising deals for various agency/clients across India. He monitored the day to day business of the network channels including FCT consumption, revenue by time band. His portfolio at Gemini Group included Gemini TV, Teja TV, Gemini Music, Gemini News, Navvulu TV and Kushi TV.

Krishnamurthy brings with him over 18 years of experience in sales and marketing operations entailing business development, programming and brand management in the media industry. Before joining Sun Group Network in 2008, he was with Affinity Media Services (February 2007-January 2008) as general manager, South. He has also worked with InNetwork Entertainment (Hinduja Group Company) for around six years, Technology Media Group for six months, i2i Creative India for a year and SITI Cable (Zee) for five years.