Quick Facts
Biography
ETV (Entertainment TV) is an English language television channel in Sri Lanka owned by EAP Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of EAP Holdings. Launched in 1995 as ETV 2, it was a sister channel of ETV 1. The channel's owner Extra Terrestrial Vision (Private) Limited, who had been incorporated on 6 July 1992, changed its name to EAP Network (Private) Limited on 30 April 1996 following the acquisition by EAP. At that time ETV 2 was re-broadcasting Star TV. ETV 1 was re-launched as Swarnavahini, a mass market Sinhala language channel, on 16 March 1997. ETV 2 was re-launched as ETV on 1 May 1998. EAP Network (Private) Limited changed its name to EAP Broadcasting Company (Private) Limited on 16 May 2012, EAP Network (Private) Limited on 31 October 2012, EAP Network Limited on 28 August 2013 and EAP Broadcasting Company Limited on 11 September 2013.
ETV is available on free-to-air on analogue terrestrial transmission via UHF channel 35 in the Colombo area and UHF channel 40 in the Kalutara area. It is also available on Lanka Broadband Networks cable TV and PEO TV IPTV (channel 5).
History
ETV started in late 1991 as a branch of Mirco-Wave Communication Systems (Private) Limited (MCS) (Sri Lanka Registrar of Companies # NPVS9093). MCS was a subsidiary of East-West Enterprisesand was the primary reason for the E in ETV (East West Television). The original board of MCS and Later ETV consisted of 4 persons - namely, Nahil Wijesuriya,Captain Lester Weinman, Uoosoof Mohideen and Priyanke de Silva. These four names are in the registrar of companies register for both ETV and Micro-Wave communication systems.
Incidentally, Nahil's alma-mater is Trinity College, Kandy while the other three studied at St. Peter's College, Colombo 4.
The logo of ETV dipicted in this article (and has the colours of East West Enterprises) was designed by Nahil Wijesuriya in his office at the Robert Senanayake Building in Nawam Mawatha, Colombo 2.
Priyanke de Silva (Priyanke Research) met Uoosoof Mohideen at the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologiesin August 1990. Priyanke and Uoosoof became friends and it was Uoosoof who invited Priyanke to join MCS as a Consultant Engineer for ETV, which was headed at that time by Mr. Roshan Rupesinghe. Soon after joining, Roshan Rupesinghe migrated to Australia at which point Nahil invited Priyanke to be the CEO/Managing Director of MCS.
The first picture on the left is of (L to R) Arlaka Jayasekara (Admin Manager MSC/ETV), Sanjay B. (Entrepreneur from India), Priyanke (CEO/MD MCS & Director/Technology consultant ETV) on the 17th floor of the SET building in Colombo 4, Sri Lanka. Incidentally, the TV shows (BBC NEWS item) an image of Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev which caught the attention of Sanjay B.
Programming for ETV was by down linking AsiaSat1 programs by a 50 foot diameter concrete dish built by Nahil (for which he owned a patent) at an East-West property in Peliyagoda, Sri Lanka. The AsiaSat1 signal was very weak (approx -19db to -23db. db is short for Decibel) and the 50foot dish enabled ETV to provide 'broadcast quality' programs. Incidentally, MCS sold self-manufactured glass-fibre dishes of 16foot diameter for residential use (including hotels).
A microwave, line-of-sight, link from Peliyagoda to Station Rd, Colombo 4 (SET building) fed the content to the broadcasting studio/station on the 17th floor of the SET building.
During this period East-West Enterprises split into two entities and Captain Lester Weinman and Mr. Nahil Wijesuriya went separate ways with Lester getting control of the Robert Senanayake Building and Nahil getting the IBM Building (Thaakshana Mandiraya) in Navam Mawatha, Colombo 2 and Nahil got total control of MCS and ETV. Nahil moved his office to the Thaakshana Mandiraya (IBM building).
Uoosoof Mohideen is/was the CNN representative for Sri Lanka and later joined Dynavision Broadcasting Corporation re-branded as ART_Television_(Sri_Lanka) as CEO upon exiting from MCS/ETV.
Priyanke de Silva also exited ETV and MCS, before Uoosoof Mohideen's exit and the primary reason was that he wanted to go back to concentrating on his core business and other ventures, including as a technology consultant for another East-West (Nahil) owned enterprise.
Nahil Wijesuriya continued on with ETV and later sold ETV to EAP Holdings.