Star News (Asia)

STAR News Asia provides news and information services by satellite to more than half of the world's population spread over 50 countries. News is delivered primarily in English, but channels also carry newscasts in other languages, notably Chinese in China and Taiwan, and Hindi in India. When STAR began to cover Asia via satellite in the early 1990s, it was a pioneer in creating competition for government-owned media, programming demand in a growing middle class, and a culture for consumerism.

STAR (Satellite Television Asian Region) is owned and operated by News Corporation (News Corp.), a global media conglomerate headed by Rupert Murdoch (1931–), the Australian media mogul who is now a U.S. citizen. As a risky upstart unseating monopolies and offering audiences more choices, STAR exemplifies traits associated with Murdoch's other media enterprises. But Murdoch did not launch STAR, instead buying a controlling share (64 percent) of young news-and-entertain-ment STAR-TV in July 1993.

STAR was begun by HutchVision, the broadcast subsidiary of Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong conglomerate owned by Li Ka-shing (1928–), the richest man in Hong Kong at the time. He had the foresight to work with the Chinese government to launch the AsiaSat satellite, on which he began broadcasts of STAR in December 1991, setting him ahead of the other main Asian competitor, Television Broadcasts (TVB) AsiaSat1 had been the first commercial satellite to provide regional coverage of Southeast Asia. Li's early move gave STAR a wide territory across which to establish a brand. STAR broadcast its five channels free, with revenue generated by the advertisers Li brought in as investors. With its satellite transmissions, STAR broadcast 24 hours a day to 38 countries stretching from the Middle East to Indonesia. News programming was provided by the British Broadcasting Corporation, a business partner. Less than two years later, and already enjoying an estimated audience of 45 million viewers, Li sold STAR-TV to Murdoch for a profit, even though the service had not yet broken even.

Murdoch's purchase of a controlling share in STAR-TV proved to be a catalyst for commercial satellite competition in Asia. STAR's rival was TVB, a consortium that was already Hong Kong's leading broadcaster. TVB, whose programming included CNN for news coverage, began leasing satellite capacity to expand its reach. The field widened with regional satellites and the digital compression that allowed more room for channels [Page 1339]on them, along with cable TV and phone services. Availability of distribution and content choices focused debate on the effectiveness of pan-Asian advertising as a revenue stream in markets so segmented by cultures and languages. Murdoch's addition of pay TV platforms soon after his purchase helped address this shift. Like Li had done, Murdoch put his sons in managerial positions in order to train and test them for the succession of his global dynasty. James Murdoch (1972–) was running the STAR satellite business in the early twenty-first century.

Transnational satellite broadcasting ushered in wider access to information and entertainment for many Asians, including those of the world's two most populous nations, China and India. Though STAR was programmed from its Hong Kong headquarters, its footprint, or the geographic reach of its satellite signal, extended across Asia to include countries with government-run media that often delivered governmental propaganda as news and did not permit foreigners to own media outlets or distribute programming. Without having to air competing viewpoints, the government voice became the unchallenged authority in interpreting events and disseminating information. Lacking competition from private media enterprises, the state-run channels had little incentive to engage their audiences' interest. With its new voices and wider scope of services, STAR quickly secured millions of viewers. While it did not capture a majority of viewers from the national media, STAR did introduce a new way of presenting information and entertainment, including added foreign perspectives, more attention to media image and modern editing techniques, and commercial priorities. The access epitomized by STAR signaled the beginning of the end of restrictive and sometimes repressive national media environments.

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