DAN TV
DAN TV is a Tamil-language television network whose channels are broadcast by satellite across Europe, including the United Kingdom, for Sri Lankan Tamil viewers and the wider Tamil diaspora. DAN stands for Dish Asia Network, and the service began in France in 2000 as DAN Tamil Oli before moving its operations to India in 2005 and then to Sri Lanka in 2008, where it is headquartered. From Sri Lanka it runs a family of Tamil channels covering entertainment, music, comedy, news, education and religion, produced in fourteen studios across the island. For Tamil-speaking families in Britain who follow satellite and streaming services from Europe, DAN TV is one of the longest-established sources of Sri Lankan Tamil programming, with a history that stretches back, through its founder's earlier channel, to Paris in 1997.
Founder S. S. Kuhanathan and the Paris beginning
DAN TV was founded by S. S. Kuhanathan, who remains its chairman. His broadcasting career began in Paris, where in 1997 he started TRT Tamil Oli. By his account, it was the first non-French-speaking television channel to launch in France, a distinction he says he only learned of when the French newspaper Le Figaro praised the achievement. Kuhanathan has said that at the start of the new millennium his TRT venture was taken from him in circumstances he attributes to the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Tamil militant organisation, and that he resolved to begin again. The result was DAN TV, founded around 2000. The Paris base mattered to the channel's later identity: the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in France was among the largest in Europe, and a Tamil channel broadcasting from Europe, rather than from South Asia, was a novelty that gave DAN an early claim to be one of the first broadcasters of Tamil channels from outside India.
DAN Tamil Oli and the move through India
DAN's journey began, in its own telling, as DAN Tamil Oli in France in 2000. In 2005 the operation moved to India. During that Indian period the Dish Asia Network expanded its bouquet and negotiated carriage with major platforms: the network entered a distribution partnership with Dish TV in India for three Tamil channels, DAN Music, DAN Cinema and DAN Ozhi, with Dish TV's chief executive welcoming the addition as a strengthening of Tamil entertainment on the platform and DAN's managing director Manivel Malone presenting the fast-growing service as the best route to the maximum number of Tamil viewers. The Indian chapter established the pattern that DAN would follow thereafter: a bouquet of genre channels, spanning films, music and general entertainment, rather than a single mixed schedule, aimed at Tamil households wherever satellite television could reach them.
Relocation to Sri Lanka in 2008
In 2008 DAN TV moved to Sri Lanka, where it has been headquartered ever since. The relocation put the network inside the community it primarily served. Sri Lanka's Tamil-speaking population is concentrated in the north and east of the island and in Colombo, and DAN built its production base accordingly. In 2009 it achieved another first, becoming, by its account, the first privately owned television company to be set up in Jaffna, the founder's hometown and the cultural centre of Sri Lankan Tamil life. The move came at a significant moment: the network's locally produced programming is credited by Sri Lankan media commentators with contributing to a renaissance in Tamil-language television production in the country from 2008 onwards, at a time when the community's arts and culture were in decline after decades of conflict. DAN's programmes, made in Sri Lanka by Sri Lankan Tamils, offered an alternative to the dominant Tamil television imported from India.
Studios and the channel family
The scale of DAN's Sri Lankan operation is one of its distinguishing features. Its channels are produced and transmitted through fourteen studios in Sri Lanka: seven in Jaffna, three in Colombo, two in Batticaloa, and one each in Trincomalee and Hatton, a spread that covers the main Tamil-speaking regions of the island. The locally produced family of channels viewable across Sri Lanka includes DAN Tamil Oli, Yarl TV, DAN Music, DAN Comedy, DAN News, Kalvi TV, Ohm TV, Holy Mary TV and Pirai TV. The names map the network's range: music and comedy entertainment, a news service, Kalvi's educational output, and religious programming through Ohm TV and Holy Mary TV, reflecting the Hindu and Christian faiths of Sri Lanka's Tamil community. Few diaspora-oriented broadcasters anywhere run a production footprint of that size in their home country, and it underpins DAN's claim to be rooted in Tamil culture rather than simply re-broadcasting it.
Programming and cultural role
DAN describes its output as infotainment: entertainment programming built around education, spirituality and community life as well as music and drama. Its original programming has included short film competitions that give new Sri Lankan Tamil filmmakers a screen, awards programmes honouring unsung heroes who have achieved for their community, and sports programmes covering cricket and football. One of its best-known fixtures is DAN 31st Night, a popular New Year's Eve musical celebration in Jaffna. The network presents this mix as a deliberate contribution to a resurgence of creativity and arts within the Sri Lankan Tamil community, and its executives have thanked Sri Lanka's major corporates and advertisers for supporting distinctive, culturally rich entertainment and education for Tamil-speaking communities, particularly in the north and east where DAN describes itself as a leader. For viewers abroad, such programmes carry a particular weight: they show contemporary life in Jaffna, Batticaloa and Colombo, not only the film industries of Chennai.
Satellite distribution in Europe and the UK
For British and European viewers, DAN TV has been a satellite service. Satellite listings and enthusiast reports over the years have recorded DAN channels broadcasting free-to-air from European satellite positions, including Eutelsat 9A at 9 degrees East, where DAN TV appeared alongside other European Tamil services such as Kalaignar TV Europe and Deepam TV, and later on Eutelsat 70B at 70.5 degrees East, where DAN Tamil Oli and DAN Music were reported. Free-to-air satellite distribution was the standard route by which diaspora channels reached the UK's Sri Lankan Tamil community, who form one of the largest Tamil populations in Europe, concentrated in London and other major cities. A household with a suitable dish could receive DAN alongside the other Tamil channels beamed from Europe, and the channel's European origin, first in France and always with a European footprint, made it a fixture of that viewing environment.
Streaming and the global diaspora
As viewing moved online, DAN's programming travelled with it. The network's output is available through its website, online streaming and a mobile app, and its channels have been carried internationally by aggregators: YuppTV, the large streaming service for South Asian content, included Dan TV in a bouquet of eighteen Sri Lankan channels in Sinhala, Tamil and English launched for viewers worldwide, at a time when an estimated three million Sri Lankan expatriates lived abroad, concentrated in Europe, the Middle East and Canada. DAN itself reports that its programming is popular with the Tamil diaspora in North America, the Middle East, Europe and Australia, the regions where Sri Lankan Tamils settled in largest numbers. For the UK audience, that means DAN is now as likely to be watched through an app or a smart television service as through the satellite dishes that first brought it to Britain.
Twenty-one years and beyond
DAN TV marked twenty-one years in the field in early 2022, counting from its 2000 founding as DAN Tamil Oli. Marking the anniversary, Kuhanathan said he stood proud of having touched the heart of Tamil audiences through the channel's popularity, and thanked those who had stood by the venture from its beginnings in Paris through its rebirth and its establishment in Sri Lanka. The network's management spoke of building on its existing audiences while creating more content and engagement for digital platforms. More than two decades after it began, DAN remains an unusual institution: a Tamil television network created in exile in Paris, rebuilt after its founder lost his first channel, and ultimately rooted in Jaffna and Colombo, whose studios produce entertainment, news, education and religious programming for Tamils at home and across the diaspora, including the long-established Sri Lankan Tamil community in the United Kingdom.
Place among Tamil channels in Britain
Within the United Kingdom, DAN TV sits in a distinctive niche. British Tamil viewers can choose between the large Indian Tamil channels, with their film and serial schedules from Chennai, and a smaller set of services made by and for the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Europe, among them Deepam TV and IBC Tamil as well as DAN. DAN's claim on that audience rests on its Sri Lankan production base, its Jaffna studios, its news and community programming, and a history that mirrors the diaspora's own story of displacement and rebuilding. For a directory of world media, it is a channel whose London listing only hints at its real geography: conceived in Paris, proven in India, headquartered in Sri Lanka, and watched, via satellite and streaming, wherever Sri Lankan Tamils have made their homes, Britain included.
