History
Launch
The company was originally registered to the Companies Registry of Hong Kong as Quford Limited on 31 August 1990. The company was renamed Hutchvision Channel Services Limited on 31 January 1991 before becoming Satellite Television Asian Region Limited (Chinese: 衛星電視有限公司; lit. 'Satellite Television Limited') on 4 July 1991. It was established by Hutchison Whampoa and was headed by Richard Li (son of Li Ka-Shing, the founder of Cheung Kong which owns Hutchison Whampoa).
The company operated its television channels under a unified brand, Star TV (Chinese: 衛星電視; pinyin: Wèixīng Diànshì; lit. 'Satellite Television'). The company's strategy was to target the top 5 percent of Asian elites who spoke English and had bought power to offer pan-Asian English programming.[1] In its initial years, the channels were broadcast over AsiaSat 1 communication satellite operated by Asia Satellite Telecommunications which was a consortium of Hutchison Whampoa, China International Trust and Investment Corporation and Cable & Wireless Worldwide and its digital electronic services was funded by Sony based in Tokyo.[citation needed] Hutchvision itself owned one third of AsiaSat and Star TV used ten out of the twenty-four transponders in the AsiaSat 1 satellite.[2]
As with the satellite's footprint, the channels reached from the Far East to the Middle East, broadcasting across 38 countries around the region.
Star TV's initial line-up of channels were: Star Sports, Star Music, Star News, Star Chinese and Star Entertainment; the last channel being subscription only.[2]
On 1 October 1992, Star TV added Zee TV (which targeted Hindi-speaking audiences) from Zee Telefilms in India to its line-up.
In 1993, Goldman Sachs became the exclusive advisor to Hutchison Whampoa Limited and the Li family for the largest merger to date.[3]
In February 1993, Julian Mounter, former director-general of Television New Zealand, was appointed as president and Chief Executive of the company.[4]
In March 1993, Star TV was offered to join ranks made by the Asia Business News.[5] By that year, the service's advertisement bookings were extensive. Julian Mounter — the chief executive and the president of HutchVision, stated that the company plans to launch the AsiaSat 2 satellite in the next two years, while starting their pay-TV services. Julian Mounter also signed agreements with four companies, mostly the programme suppliers, that he stated that the company will have as many than six channels operating by April 1994. He also said that the programmes will include more English and Chinese movie channels, a business channel, a children's channel, and what was supposed to be a documentary channel, and another entertainment channel. With the launch of the new AsiaSat satellite, Star TV would have to be capable for broadcasting as many as one-hundred channels.[6] In June 1993, Star TV and Wharf Cable signed a deal in which Hong Kong's new cable television provider would carry Star TV's channels.[7] However, the deal was terminated in February 1994 in the carriage dispute between the two parties.[8]
Sale to News Corporation
Star TV's viewership across Asia increased over the years and it attracted advertisers, but the business was making loss. The company was looking for an Anglophone partner for financial investments, additional English language programming and technical assistance, especially to launch a pay-television system that would carry encrypted channels.[9]
On 1 May 1993, Pearson approached Star TV's owners, and was expected to pay up to GBP 100 million.[9] Pearson (which owned minor stake in British broadcasters BSkyB and Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television at the time, and had just acquired Thames Television) was looking to expand its media business outside the UK, especially because the British laws at that time did not allow Pearson to expand more on UK television business.[10][11] Pearson was looking for the 66% of the company, but the deal was reported to have required the Hong Kong side to remain active shareholders, making the deal to be turned down.[10][11] The initial negotiations with Rupert Murdoch were reported to have foundered after the Australian businessman demanded a controlling stake in the Hong Kong company.[9] On same day, Murdoch's News Corporation purchased 63.6% of Star TV for US$525 million, half in cash, half in News Corporation's ordinary shares, blocking offers from Pearson. The deal came after News Corporation failed to acquire 22% of TVB because of regulatory issues.[12][13][14] News Corporation acquired the remaining 36.4% for US$299 million in July 1995.[15][16] Li family and Hutchison Whampoa would retain its shares in Hutchvision Hong Kong Limited, which uplinked Star TV's channels.[12][13][15][16] With the amount of money made from the 1993 sale, Richard Li went on to establish his own venture, Pacific Century Group.[17] It was later theorized by author Shiau Hong-chi wrote that Murdoch's purchase of Star TV was based on a theory of media globalization assuming that people across every nation and languages would watch the same TV programs with as little effort as possible with the original plan for Star TV being to broadcast popular American shows to Asian audience. However, the plan would deem unsuccessful with Star TV being forced to invest heavly on local branches to make local shows for the Asian audience.[18] On 1 August 1993, following News Corporation's takeover, Julian Mounter resigned as Chief Executive of the company. Sam Chisholm, who was the head of BSkyB at the time, became acting Chief Executive before he was formally appointed.[19][20][21]
In July 1993, Star TV was purchased by Rupert Murdoch for US$525 million. This was Murdoch's most important acquisition since the debt-restructuring crisis in 1990. He also bought Hutchvision, the parent company of Star TV.[22]
Star TV's line-up of channels as of 1993 were: MTV Asia, BBC World Service Television, a sports channel, an English-language entertainment channel and a Chinese-language entertainment channel. It also planned to launch a movie channel in Chinese and Hindi later in the year. [23] The Star TV network reached an estimate of 45 million people and was the only large satellite network to reach all of Asia.[22]
In January 1994, James Griffiths resigned as a managing director and Gary Davey took his place.[24] With the controversial removal of BBC World Service Television from the company's satellite television offerings for Northeast Asia in mid-April 1994 (discussed below), Star TV replaced the BBC channel with two channels; English-language film channel Star Movies and Chinese-language film channel Star Chinese Movies.[25] The decision about replacing WSTV with the movie channels were made while Star TV considering the launch of a documentary and educational channel that two companies had a joint-venture in them.[26]
In April 1994, Star TV had formed a three-year partnership from Asia Television, as Star TV struggled to be the part of the Chinese-language programme battle with TVB. The joint-venture marked the beginning of the long-term cooperation for the programmes and for the co-productions. However, this agreement also supersedes the previous program supply deal made in 1991 (with ATV being the part of the Chinese Channel's programming and Star was still being owned by the Li Ka-Shing family) that it were foundered due to the strike. Star TV also acquired one-thousand hours annually of prime-time dramas and special programming dubbed in Mandarin Chinese. ATV also provided dubbing and other facilities for the Star TV Network. The joint-venture also co-produced fewer than 40 hours of quality dramas per year, broadcast simultaneously with ATV showing the original programming in Cantonese in the British Hong Kong territory, and Star TV showing them in Mandarin Chinese. In addition, Star TV also operated the Chinese Channel in competition to TVB. Star TV also bought a library of more than 570 Chinese films from the Golden Harvest Group and had recently announced an deal of more than 50 films to be produced in the next three years by Media Asia Film.[27]
Star TV and Viacom (MTV) ended partnership that supplied music television programming, so Star TV launched Channel V to replace the American brand. The Indian version was launched on 23 May 1994, it was followed by four additional versions: Channel V International, Channel V Thailand, Channel V Korea, Channel V Japan, and another three versions in Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese and Cantonese.[28] Star TV split its satellite signal to both northern and southern beams, resulting in a change for both operations. The northern beam included Prime Sports, Channel V, Star Plus, Star Movies and Star Chinese Channel, while the southern beam had Prime Sports, Channel V, Star Plus, BBC WSTV, Zee TV and Zee Cinema.[29] However, Star Sports' northern beam featured soccer and gymnastics, while the southern beam included cricket for the Indian viewers.[30] However, after the purchase of a 49.9% interest of Zee TV in early-1994, the northern beam launched Zee News and Zee Cinema, which were Zee TV's sister channels.[31]
Star TV channels were rebroadcast terrestrially in Brunei as of late 1994.[32]
Star TV had proposed to expand to Malaysia in late 1994, with its spokesman thought that it would be "a place to do business" due to Malaysia's position as an important country in Asia. This would mean the end of a feud between Malaysian media and British media. [33]
Star TV reached Indonesia in 1995 through an agreement with satellite provider Indovision. 15 channels were planned to launch in the second half of the year. [34]
The viewership share of Star TV in Taiwan in 1995 was at 42%, attributed to the launch of Star Movies which had many viewers in the country.[35]
On 30 March 1995, the satellite radio station Star Radio launched, with a Mandarin service for North Asia and English service for South Asia and the Middle East. [36]
In Summer 1995, Star TV considering the plans to launch at least thirty channels on the service when AsiaSat 2 was launched. The new channels let the Star TV Network to further customize its services for other regions and cultures.[37]
In early-1996, Star TV formed a third-party joint-venture as Phoenix Satellite Television Corporation, offering three channels on its service targeting China, with Phoenix Chinese Channel offering variety & entertainment, Star Sports and Phoenix Movies.[38] On 30 March 1996 at 7 pm Hong Kong Time, Star TV split into Star Plus and Star Chinese Channel by certain areas.[39]
In 1997, Star TV launched Star Select package of television channels targeting the Middle East via the Orbit (now OSN) service. In 1998, Star TV and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were in discussion to launch a new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's movie channel in India. Rathikant Basu also stated that the company was considering to launch four new regional channels, including those in Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi.[40] In December 1998, the Star TV Network's channels were supposed to be removed on the Indovision service due to a bitter clash between the company and Indovision.[41] However, the court granted Star TV's decision to not sell its channels anywhere across Indonesia. During the same month, Star TV announced its partnership with Phoenix Satellite TV and in cooperation with the European-based Chinese News and Entertainment to launch Phoenix Europe, a Mandarin-language channel that will broadcast entertainment and news from Phoenix Television's libraries to European audiences in August of the same year.[42]
In May 1999, Star TV migrated its services from AsiaSat 1 and 2 to AsiaSat 3S.[43]
By late-1999 to the early-2000s, Star TV used AsiaSat 3S and Palapa C2 to broadcast across Asia and the Middle East in 53 countries with the audience reaching up to 300 million. Star Chinese Channel, Phoenix Chinese Channel, Star Plus, Star World, Channel V, ESPN, Star Sports, Star Movies, Phoenix Movies, Viva Cinema, Star News, Zee News, Zee Cinema, Zee TV, Fox News, Sky News and the National Geographic Channel were broadcast on the service at the time.[44]
In 2000, Star TV inserted even more focus in the two markets, including China and India. In India, Star TV started to increase a number of Hindi programming seen on Star Plus and received an success from the Indian Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and with several Hindi-language popular serials, beating their own rivals — Zee TV and Sony Entertainment Television. The Indian operations was estimated to account for 55% of Star TV's revenues in Asia at the time.[45] On 15 January 2000, Star TV added Disney Channel, as the company handling it's distribution and ad sales for the channel, it marks the second partnership with The Walt Disney Company, which also owned ESPN. On 1 July 2000, Zee TV ended partnership with Star TV. The Hong Kong-based company converted Star Plus to a Hindi entertainment channel, and introduced Star World in the area as an English entertainment replacement.
On New Year's Day (1 January) 2001 at midnight stroke, the company was rebranded from Star TV to Star, reflecting the company's evolution from a television brand to a multi-service, multi-platform brand. In Chinese, the company referred itself as Xīngkōng Chuánméi (Chinese: 星空傳媒; lit. 'Star Media') instead of Wèixīng Diànshì from then on. It introduced a new set of logos. The logo scheme of the Star network (the name of the channel next to the Star logo icon, contained within a rectangle with two opposite corners rounded) that had been used throughout 2007 (but it still used by Xing Kong, ANTV and tvOne's news programs Kabar[46] as of 2023). Static Design (a broadcasting design arm of Static 2358, now-defunct) designed the company and the seven channels' identities.[47]
Star TV aired the high-definition programme Angel in 2006, in co-production with the Singaporean Mediacorp Studios. The show was scheduled to have 40 episodes aired, and shot in Taiwan. The show was aired on Star Chinese Channel in Taiwan and via Mediacorp in Singapore, the Star TV handling distribution and sales in other countries. In addition, Star Chinese Movies had been announced that the channel has investment in three high-definition films, to be executive produced by Derek Yee Tung-sing. Plus, the National Geographic Channel involved up to 30% in one-thousand hours of high-definition programming commissioned in Asia (excluding Japan).[48]
2009 restructure, refocus on East and Southeast Asia
On 19 August 2009, News Corporation announced a restructure of Star. Star India and Star Greater China would be separated from Star's headquarters in Hong Kong, and the heads of the former two companies would report directly to James Murdoch, News Corporation's then-Chairman and Chief Executive for Europe and Asia.[49][50][51]
- Star India took over all of Star's operations in India, as well as sales and distribution of Fox-branded channels in the region. It also took over Star's distribution offices in the Middle East, the United Kingdom and the United States.
- Star Greater China would oversee Star Chinese Channel, Star Chinese Movies, Star Chinese Movies 2, Xing Kong and Channel V Mainland China, as well as Fortune Star film library.
- The original Star TV company became Fox International Channels Asia Pacific, and would now focus on East and Southeast Asia. It also took over the representation of FIC channels from NGC Network Asia, LLC (the channels that were distributed by Star anyway). The company would continue to distribute its channels in the Middle East, and would take responsibility of the distribution of Star India and Star Greater China's channels in Asia outside their respective home markets.
Despite the 2009 reorganisations, the company did not immediately change its legal name from Satellite Television Asian Region Limited. It only changed its legal name to Fox International Channels Asia Pacific Limited (Chinese: 福斯國際電視網有限公司; lit. 'Fox International Television Network Limited') on 2 September 2014.
In August 2010, it was announced that News Corporation would sell a controlling stake in its assets in mainland China to China Media Capital (CMC).[52][53][54] Xing Kong (both domestic and international versions) and Channel V Mainland China, plus Fortune Star film library were in the sale,[52][53][54] and a joint venture named Star China Media was created in the process. CMC acquired the remaining stake in Star China Media in January 2014.[55][56][57]
In June 2012, it was announced that News Corporation would buy ESPN International's share in the joint venture ESPN Star Sports.[58][59] The versions of ESPN broadcast in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia were rebranded as Fox Sports on 28 January 2013,[60][61] and Star Sports became Fox Sports 2 on 15 August 2014.[62][63] The Fox Sports rebrand did not affect India and East Asia: In India, Star India took over ESPN Star Sports' Indian subsidiary,[64] and kept the ESPN name until 6 November 2013, when all of Star India's sports channels were relaunched under the Star Sports brand;[65][66][67] a version of Star Sports broadcast to mainland China and South Korea kept the brand, and instead, the version of ESPN for mainland China was renamed Star Sports 2 on 1 January 2014.
In the wake of 2011 News Corporation scandals, the original News Corporation was split into 21st Century Fox and the new News Corp on 28 June 2013, with the television businesses (which FIC Asia was a part of) going to 21st Century Fox. In October 2013, 12.15% of share in Phoenix Television held by 21st Century Fox (through Star) was sold to TPG Capital for HK$1.66 billion (about US$213.73 million).[68][69][70][71] This and 2014 sale of Star China Media marked 21st Century Fox's exit from Mandarin entertainment television market in mainland China.
By 2014, Fox International Channels Middle East took over the distribution of Star World, Star Movies, National Geographic-branded channels, Fox-branded channels, Channel V International, Baby TV and Sky News in the Middle East and North Africa from Star Select (now renamed Fox Networks Group Middle East, the Middle East business together with FNG Asia Pacific, still a part of the wider FNG Asia operations).
In January 2016, the company's parent unit, Fox International Channels, was announced to be split into three divisions, which would see the heads of newly renamed Fox Networks Group Europe, Fox Networks Group Latin America and Fox Networks Group Asia all reporting to CEO Peter Rice and COO Randy Freer at Fox Networks Group in the United States, thus abolishing Fox International Channels as a separate unit from 21st Century Fox's television business in the U.S.[72] Accordingly, the company was officially launched new name and logo to becomes Fox Networks Group Asia Pacific Limited (Chinese: 福斯傳媒有限公司; lit. 'Fox Media Limited') on 29 February 2016.
On 5 December 2017, Star India's Chairman and CEO Uday Shankar was appointed as 21st Century Fox's president for Asia, and the President of Fox Networks Group Asia would report directly to Shankar (instead of the equivalent at FNG U.S.).[73]
Disney ownership and closure
With the acquisition of 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets by The Walt Disney Company, FNG Asia Pacific (including FNG Taiwan, and FNG's remaining businesses in mainland China), as well as Star India, became a part of Disney and FNG Asia were integrated into Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International (now Disney International Operations) unit. Fox Networks Group Asia was split into three, as to plug into the Disney International structure with offices in Shanghai, Mumbai, and Singapore. The reconfiguration and layoff began on 29 June 2020 with layoff focused on FNG Asia's Hung Hom, Kowloon headquarters, which dates back to the 1993 acquisition by a 21st Century Fox predecessor of PCCW.[74]
The Walt Disney Company announced to officially ceased 18 of their linear pay TV channels on October 1, 2021 as Disney prioritized the rollout for Disney+ across Asian territories (or Disney+ Hotstar for Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand). Mentioned pay TV channels include Fox Sports network, in which at the time, they broadcast Formula 1 and MotoGP along with all four major Grand Slams and most of UFC fights; and Fox Movies network, which also include Fox Action Movies and Fox Family Movies, when Disney, Marvel Studios, and 20th Century films were absent following the acquisition.[75]
Most of Fox Sports Asia programming heading elsewhere after the closure, such as SPOTV which replaced the main Fox Sports channel on launch while also aired the remainder of 2021 MotoGP World Championship,[76] awhile latest Walt Disney, Marvel and 20th Century films were released through Disney+ (or Disney+ Hotstar). General entertainment contents which aired on Fox and Fox Life are either moved to Disney+ or, following the shutdown, through Fox's rival pay TV networks.
This caused some of their employees, including Singapore-based marketing leads Daniel Tan and Shoba Martin to leave the company following the pay TV operation shutdown,[77] awhile at the same time, this decision has been criticized due to poor Internet connectivity in some areas and also got no plans to rollout Disney+ for other smaller regions.
Meanwhile in Taiwan, Disney Channel officially closed on New Year's Day 2022 as Disney contents relocated to Disney+ permanently.[78] Meanwhile at the same time, both Fox Movies and Fox rebranded themselves as Star Movies Gold (which, unlike Star Movies HD, has different movie lineups and using branding from the first incarnation) and Star World respectively.[79] This marked the only country with Disney channels operating under the Star brand alongside the existing Star Chinese Movies and Star Chinese Channel.
The remaining linear pay TV channels, including National Geographic, ceased their transmission on October 1, 2023 in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and (for National Geographic) South Korea with Taiwan to be followed on January 1, 2024,[80] which the closure impacted its Taiwanese cable TV industry.[81]
