Khalsa TV

Khalsa TV, broadcast on screen as KTV, was a Birmingham-based television channel serving the Sikh community in the United Kingdom. It operated under a licence held by Khalsa Television Limited and broadcast on Sky, where it was found on channel 771 in its later years. Based in Birmingham, a city with a large Sikh population, the channel set out to combine Sikh religious programming with Punjabi family entertainment, cultural material and discussion programmes for viewers of all ages.

The channel's life was relatively short. It was prepared for launch during 2016, began testing ahead of a place on the Sky electronic programme guide in December of that year, and started its official programme schedule in January. Within a few years it had become better known nationally for a series of serious breaches of the broadcasting rules than for its regular output. After a suspension in March 2022 and a draft notice to revoke its licence that May, Khalsa Television Limited surrendered its broadcasting licence in June 2022. KTV therefore ended as a licensed UK television service, and its history is now written in the past tense.

Launch and identity

KTV's preparations were reported in the Asian media trade press in late 2016. The service had originally been promoted under the fuller name Khalsa TV, but before launch it was shortened on screen to KTV, while the licence holder remained Khalsa Television Limited. Trade reports at the time described video testing taking place off the Sky guide before the formal launch, a common step for new satellite channels preparing their transmission chain.

The positioning was clear from the start. Reports described KTV as a Sikh religious and cultural channel based in Birmingham, broadcasting religious content alongside Punjabi family entertainment shows. That mix placed it in a crowded but well-established part of the Sky guide, where a number of South Asian language and faith channels competed for diaspora audiences with a combination of devotion, music, discussion and entertainment.

On its own website, as quoted in later news coverage, KTV described itself in upbeat terms as an exciting channel airing cultural, educational and entertaining programmes for audiences of all ages, and said it prided itself on being completely independent, impartial and honest. Those self-descriptions became part of almost every later news report about the channel, because journalists reporting the regulatory cases routinely quoted the channel's own account of its mission alongside the regulator's findings.

Ownership and company history

The licence holder was Khalsa Television Limited. Company reporting in 2021 introduced a further complication in the channel's story. According to Companies House reporting cited by the Asian media press, Khalsa TV Limited, company number 10086781, was ordered by a court to be wound up on 28 May 2021. Despite that liquidation order against the company named in the report, KTV was reported at the time as continuing to broadcast on Sky channel 771.

That separation between the fate of a company and the continuation of a broadcast service helps explain why the channel's final end came through regulation rather than through a simple commercial closure. When Ofcom acted in 2022, it acted against Khalsa Television Limited as licensee, suspending and then moving to revoke the licence to broadcast the KTV service in the United Kingdom. The surrender of the licence in June 2022, rather than a sale or a rebrand, was the act that brought the service to a close.

Programming

Verified reporting gives a clear outline of the kinds of programmes KTV carried, even though detailed schedules were not widely preserved. Its output included Sikh religious programmes and Punjabi family entertainment, cultural and educational programmes, music videos, and live discussion programmes. Two discussion formats were named repeatedly in regulatory reporting: Panthak Masle, a discussion programme broadcast live in March 2019, and Prime Time, a 95-minute live discussion programme broadcast on 30 December 2021 that became the subject of the final, decisive investigation.

Discussion programming in Punjabi was central to the channel's identity and also to its difficulties. Because programmes were broadcast in Punjabi, Ofcom investigations involved commissioned English translations of what had been said on air. The accuracy and interpretation of those translations later became a point of dispute between the licensee and the regulator, with KTV arguing that Ofcom had misunderstood words used by a presenter. Ofcom, for its part, said the channel's objections had not provided substantive detail and offered further opportunities to respond.

Audience and community role

KTV was aimed largely, in Ofcom's own description, at the Sikh community in the United Kingdom. That community audience explained both the channel's language choice and its programme mix: religious observance, community discussion, music and family entertainment have long been the staple ingredients of British Asian satellite television, serving viewers who want content rooted in their faith and culture alongside their wider British lives.

Birmingham was a logical base for such a service. The West Midlands has one of Britain's largest Sikh populations, and the city already hosted other Sikh broadcasting activity. KTV entered a market in which the longer-established Sikh Channel, also based in the Birmingham area, had been broadcasting since 2009. KTV's offer of a broader blend, including entertainment and current discussion, was its attempt to stand out within that niche.

The first Ofcom breaches and the £50,000 fine

KTV's regulatory problems began with content broadcast in 2018 and 2019. In February 2021 Ofcom imposed financial penalties totalling £50,000 on Khalsa Television Limited. The penalty was split into £20,000 relating to a music video and £30,000 relating to a discussion programme, and Ofcom also directed the channel to broadcast a statement of its findings and not to repeat the material concerned.

The music video was for a song called Bagga and Shera, broadcast on 4, 7 and 9 July 2018. Ofcom found that it amounted to an indirect call to action for Sikhs living in the UK to commit violence, up to and including murder, and noted brief frames of on-screen text that appeared when the video was slowed down. The discussion programme, Panthak Masle, broadcast live on 30 March 2019, was found to have given guests a platform for views that amounted to indirect calls to action likely to encourage or incite crime, and to have included a reference to the proscribed organisation Babbar Khalsa that, in Ofcom's view, could be taken as legitimising it.

Suspension in 2022

A further programme brought matters to a head. Prime Time, broadcast on 30 December 2021, was a 95-minute live discussion. Ofcom's investigation found that statements by the presenter, taken together, promoted violent action, including murder, as an acceptable and necessary form of action to further the Khalistani cause. The regulator treated this as a serious breach of its rules on incitement to crime and disorder, concerning content likely to encourage or incite the commission of a crime or lead to disorder.

On 31 March 2022 Ofcom suspended Khalsa Television Limited's licence with immediate effect, and KTV was off air from that date. During the suspension the licensee was not permitted to broadcast the KTV service, and Ofcom warned that broadcasting during the suspension period would amount to a criminal offence punishable by an unlimited fine. The licensee was given 21 days to make representations before Ofcom decided whether to revoke the licence.

Draft revocation and surrender of the licence

The process continued through the spring of 2022. Ofcom had issued a preliminary view in February 2022, KTV objected to the translation and analysis of the programme, and Ofcom considered that the objection lacked substantive detail and offered another chance to respond. KTV maintained that the programme had not contained an incitement in breach of the rules and gave what it described as an example of a misunderstanding of the presenter's words.

On 13 May 2022 Ofcom issued a draft notice to revoke the licence. In doing so, the regulator stressed the history: this, it said, was the third time within four years that the licensee had been found in breach of rules on incitement to crime because of programmes inciting violence. Ofcom also noted that if the broadcaster, or those controlling it, applied for a licence in future, the revocation process, the decision and the former licensee's full compliance history would be major factors. Having received the draft revocation notice on 26 May, Khalsa Television Limited surrendered its licence, and Ofcom announced that surrender in June 2022, in reporting dated 22 June.

Place in British Asian television

KTV's story is a cautionary example of how quickly a small community channel could be undone by compliance failures. Live discussion programming, a strength for community engagement, carried particular risk when presenters and guests addressed sensitive political subjects without effective on-air control. The regulator's findings moved from fines to suspension to threatened revocation in little more than a year, a progression that reflected repeat breaches rather than a single mistake.

At the same time, the channel should be remembered for what it set out to do. For more than five years it offered Sikh viewers in Britain a Birmingham-made service combining faith, culture, music and family entertainment in Punjabi. Its closure in 2022 left that audience to the remaining Sikh and Punjabi services on satellite and online platforms.

Key facts

• Broadcast name: KTV, originally promoted as Khalsa TV
• Licensee: Khalsa Television Limited
• Base: Birmingham, England
• Launch: Sky guide launch in December 2016, with official shows starting in January
• Platform: Sky, on channel 771 in its later years
• Content: Sikh religious programmes, Punjabi family entertainment, cultural and educational programmes, music videos and live discussion
• Regulatory end: Licence suspended on 31 March 2022; draft revocation notice issued on 13 May 2022; licence surrendered in June 2022

Taken together, those facts describe a channel whose ambitions were typical of British diaspora television, but whose ending was unusually abrupt and entirely regulatory in character.