MUMBAI: Kannada Kasturi, the television channel promoted by the Bangalore-based Kasturi Media Pvt Ltd (KMPL), will be unveiled on 1 November. KMPL is promoted by Anitha Kumaraswamy, the wife of Karnataka chief minister D Kumaraswamy.

Originally planned as a news channel, Kasturi will now be an entertainment channel with news content. "We will be launching the channel on 1 November. We have acquired a good chunk of movies recently and this is the reason for the change in our plans. The company also has a subsidiary which is into film production. This will help us supply movies to the channel," says KMPL director M V Prasad Babu.

KMPL has got the uplinking licence from the Information & Broadcasting ministry, Babu adds. The channel will be uplinked from a commercial teleport facility in the country.

Reportedly, D Kumaraswamy started his career as a film distributor for Kannada movies. He has Kannada blockbusters like Suryavamsha and Chandra Chakori to his credit.

The entry of Kannada Kasturi will see the politically driven Tamil channels getting a Karnataka counterpart. The Rs 2 billion Kannada Television market is dominated by the Sun Network channels including Udaya TV.

This year, Zee made its entry in the market with its entertainment channel Zee Kannada. The Telugu television network TV9 will be launching its news channel TV9 Kannada in a couple of months.