STAR India

STAR India is an Indian media and entertainment company, owned by 21st Century Fox. It is headquartered in Mumbai, with regional offices in cities Delhi and Chennai.

STAR India's portfolio includes 33 channels in eight languages.^[1]

History

Before 1993

Star TV was a joint venture between Hutchison Whampoa and Li-Ka Shing and was established to launch such a service. Li-Ka Shing's son, Richard, was CEO. It was launched in 1991. In early 90s, Star India included Star Plus (then an English-language entertainment channel), Prime Sports (later became Star Sports), Mtv (through a tie up with Viacom), Star Movies and Zee TV (belonging to Subhash Chandra). Star TV was beamed out of Asiasat satellite.

In 1993, Rupert Murdoch brought a 64 percent stake in Star TV for $525 million. Star was originally broadcasting content from Rupert Murdoch's Fox Broadcasting and thus a synergy was envisioned. In 1995, Zee TV and Star signed an agreement to promote each other's content on their respective networks. Thus ads for Star programs began to appear on Zee and vice versa. This agreement was however short-lived as Star's English-language entertainment channel Star Plus started broadcasting Hindi content. By 1997, Star Plus became a 100% Hindi-language entertainment channel and Star TV launched Star World a separate channel that broadcast content formerly shown by Star Plus.

After 1993

In 1993 News Corporation purchased 63.6% of STAR for over $500 million, followed by the purchase of the remaining 36.4% in 1 January 1993.^[2][3] Murdoch declared that:^[4]

In the years after Murdoch purchased Star, an agreement with Subhash Chandra prohibited Star from creating Hindi-language programming, so Star relied mainly on English-language imported programming. Star was third in Indian market share (3%) behind Zee TV (12%) and Sony (11%). For four years until 1999, Star had losses of nearly US$500 million. Consequently, Murdoch revamped Star management; programming chief Sameer Nair decided to start creating Hindi-language programming to target "mass instead of class."^[5]

In August 2009, STAR Broadcasting Corporation revealed a restructure to its Asian broadcast businesses into three units – STAR India, STAR (Greater China), and Fox International Channels Asia.^[6]

STAR India also manages News Corporation's interests in seven ventures including DTH operator Tata Sky; cable system Hathway, channel distributor Media Pro Enterprise, South Indian broadcast business of Asianet channels and STAR Vijay, the film producor and distributor Fox Star Studios India and STAR CJ Alive Home Shopping.

STAR India entered into High Definition broadcasting on 15 April 2011 with the launch of the HD versions of its channels, including Star Plus HD, Star Movies HD, Star World HD, Star Gold HD and National Geographic Channel India HD.

Star CJ Alive

Star CJ Alive is an Indian Television shopping channel which was started between Star India and CJ Group of South Korea in 2009.^[7] It is a 24 / 7 shopping channel which in its starting stage used Star Utsav for hosting the television marketing programs in six hour slots.^[8] In its initial years, the programs were aired in Hindi, the National language of India. Star CJ Alive and depends mainly on Infomericals. On November 14, 2012 Star CJ Alive appointed Kenny Shin as CEO for India.^[9][10]

Business results

In August, 2012 Business Line of The Hindu group reported that Star CJ Alive is claiming an average sales of products worth Rs.95 lakhs on week days and Rs.1.2 crores on weekends.^[11] Approximately 65% of the sales come from electronics segment while household segment stands second in the race. In December 2012, some sections of the media reported that Rupert Murdoch run News Corp may exit Star CJ by selling its entire stake to Providence Equity Partners.^[12] This share transfer reportedly ran into trouble when the Department of Revenue discovered that funds from other jurisdictions were being channelized to exploit Indo Mauritius double taxation avoidance agreement.^[13]

List of Channels provided

Star India Currently Provide These Chennels

Star TV HD Channels

National Sports Network in India

STAR sports group has planned to build a national sports network in India. The plan includes broadcasting in Indian languages. Starting from regional language Hindi to expansion for South Indian languages. ESPN was renamed Star Sports 4, Star Cricket was renamed Star Sports 3, Star Sports was renamed to Star Sports 1 and STAR Sports 2 kept its name. Star Cricket HD and ESPN HD will be renamed Star Sports 1 HD and Star Sports 2 HD respectively.STAR SPORTS 3 will be predominantly a Hindi-only channel. STAR plans to start with Cricket, Field Hockey and Football (Soccer) initially. Domestic cricket of India like Deodhar Trophy and Ranji Trophy are considered. Besides this two non professional leagues like the University Cricket and University Field Hockey are also panned to be launched by STAR. In Football Barclays English Premier League is also considered for regional broadcasting by STAR. ^[14]

Current Status

Currently STAR has broadcast the 2013 Champions Trophy of Cricket in Hindi with Devanagri script. STAR has also started to broadcast Barclays English Premier League with Hindi commentary. More over 2013 Men's Hockey Asia Cup and 2013 Indian Badminton League are also broadcast with Hindi Commentary by STAR.Currently the NKP Salve Challenger Trophy 2013 is being broadcast in Hindi on STAR SPORTS 2.More over Sultan of Johor Cup is also being broadcast in Hindi on ESPN.

References

• STAR TV History

External links

• Official Site (STAR TV US)
• Official Site (STAR TV India)
• Official Site (STAR TV Middle East)
• Official Site (STAR TV UK)