TV Today, an India Today group company, has decided to foray into the United States, the Untied Kingdom and Dubai markets, and is considering turning its news channels into pay channels once the conditional access system is implemented.

"We are looking into the opportunity to turn our news channels into pay channels once the CAS is implemented. We expect to become pay channels by next 16-25 months," TV Today Network CEO G Krishnan told newspersons in New Delhi on Monday.

The move would enable the company, which has recently launched its initial public offer, to become more transparent and enhance its revenue earnings from subscription.

The TV Today network, which earned a total advertisement revenue of Rs 190 crore (Rs 1.90 billion) from its Hindi news channel Aaj Tak during last fiscal, expected the subscription revenue to contribute 30 per cent to its total earnings by 2005.

Besides, the company, which has recently launched its English news channel Headlines Today, has decided to tap the markets in the US, the UK and Dubai in a big way.

"There are large number of Indian viewers in these markets. The cost of delivering signal to these places has also reduced significantly during last few years, raising profitability. We are aiming to achieve a subscription of one million in each of these markets by 2005," Krishnan said.

The company also has plans to launch a business channel and local channels in various areas in the country, but would not go for entertainment section, he said.

"A business channel is on the drawing board, but we don't want to rush into it. The Headlines Today channel will cover the southern region while Aaj Tak covers the other places. But we have no plan to enter the entertainment section and stick to our core area of competence, i.e. news," Krishnan said.

With the new channels being planned to be launched, the company, which ventured into television media in 1998, has plans to offer a complete package of news channels to the cable operators, he said.

The expansion in operations, he said, was drawn out in view of the boom in the media industry.

"The number of cable homes has grown from 20 million in 2000 to 45 million now and is expected to increase to 64 million by 2007. The implementation of technology induced systems like CAS, direct-to-home and optical fibre network would pave way for further enhancement of the reach of the media in coming years," he said.