MUMBAI: Raj TV has roped in Tamil television programming veteran V Chandrasekhar to give it a new look. The Tamil general entertainment channel brought Chandrasekhar as executive vice president programming and production, a newly-created post.

Chandrasekhar is the former director, operations, of the K Balachander-headed production house Min Bimbangal.

Chandrasekhar says his effort will be to shape the content differently at Raj TV. "The shift in strategy is based on a market study we had conducted. The aim is to target niche Tamil markets. We will be launching more daily soaps in the May-June period," he says.

Programming strategies will be revamped, says Chandrasekhar, as the channel will be experimenting with new time bands. The channel is reserving its evening prime time band - 7 PM to 10:30 PM - exclusively for soaps. To start with, Raj TV is launching a soap titled Mundani Mudichu in the first week of May for the 9 PM slot, replacing a film-based show.

"The new strategy is not about bringing in different programmes. It is about doing programmes differently. We want to bring a change in the area of production values, turnaround time, timeliness of the content and the kind of people it reaches out to," he says.

During his 14-year stint with Min Bimbangal, Chandrasekhar has worked behind various successful projects. He was responsible for one of the Sun TV channel drivers Kayyalavu Manasu, almost 12 serials for Raj TV and then the Vijay TV reality show Kadhayalla Nijam.