On the character ring of a finite group

Let $G$ be a finite group and let $k$ be a sufficiently large finite field. Let $R(G)$ denote the character ring of $G$ (i.e. the Grothendieck ring of the category of ${\mathbb{C}}G$-modules). We study the structure and the representations of the commutative algebra $k \otimes\_{\mathbb{\ZM}} R(G)$