Ananda Vikatan is a Tamil-language weekly magazine published from Chennai, India. It was the second largest magazine in circulation within India, as of 2017.
History and profile
Ananda Vikatan was started by Budalur Vaidyanadhaiyar in February 1926 as a monthly publication. The issue for December 1927 was not published due to financial difficulties. In January 1928 S. S. Vasan bought the rights from Vaidyanadhaiyer and relaunched the publication from February 1928 in a new format He paid ₹200 at the rate of ₹25 per alphabet in the Tamil language name of the publication to buy the rights. He built it up into a weekly and sales soon rose. Ananda Vikatan is still running successfully after ninety years. Veteran journalist and media personality S. Balasubramanian served as editor, managing director and publisher of the magazine for nearly 50 years till 2006. Balasubramanian also mentored generations of journalists and writers. He also started the "Manavar Thittam" or student journalism scheme that is active for the last 30 years and counting. He also launched Junior Vikatan, a biweekly Tamil investigative journal in the 1980s in addition to his many accomplishments as Vikatan's publisher. He was the son of S. S. Vasan and continues to be Chairman Emeritus of the group after handing over the reins to his son B. Srinivasan. Vikatan has now evolved as Vikatan group in the Tamil Nadu magazine industry. Vikatan over the years has provided the opportunity for many great Tamil writers such as Kalki Krishnamurthy, Devan, Sujatha Rangarajan, Gnani Sankaran, Madhan, and RK Shanmugam. Cartoons and illustration also flourished, producing work from artists Maya, 'Mali' Mahalingam, Madhan, Sridhar, Silpi, Thanu and Gopulu. Currently Rajumurugan, Peyon, S.Ramakrishnan and Jeyamohan are some of the notable contributors to Vikatan.
Publications group
It is part of Vasan Publications, the Vikatan magazine group, which also publishes Junior Vikatan, Chutti Vikatan, Aval Vikatan, Naanayam Vikatan, Sakthi Vikatan, Motor Vikatan, Pasumai Vikatan, Doctor Vikatan, TimePass, Aval Manamagal, Aval Kitchen and Vikatan Deepavali Malar.
Visual medi
Vikatan Televistas was launched by Vasan Publications in the late 1990s starting with weekly tele-serials on Sun TV.
Tamil television
The company ventured into film production as Vikatan Talkies, and successfully made the comedySiva Manasula Sakthi starring Jiiva and Anuya that launched the career of the director Rajesh. They then followed this with the commercially unsuccessful Vaalmiki. The media house still produces a variety of programs for television and has branched out into various streams of media content with an online digital broadcast of snippets of news, views, interviews etc.
YouTube
SocialBlade ranked Vikatan TV YouTube Channel as 36th nationwide with 1.1 billion video views and 53rd with 3.3 million subscribers in May 2017.
According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, for the period of July–December 2004, circulation stood at 4,30,534 per week. This represents a 22per cent growth over the previous half-year period..
