News Corp restructures Asia businesses
To support continued growth and cut its costs, Rupert Murdoch’s media company, News Corporation, has decided to restructure its Asian broadcast businesses into three units — STAR India, STAR Greater China and Fox International Channels (FIC).
Earlier, all of STAR’s operations were looked after by the Hong Kong office of STAR TV under a chief executive officer. As part of the restructuring, Paul Aiello, CEO of STAR, will leave the company to ensure a smooth transition, a statement from News Corporation said.
This means, STAR’s current operations from its regional headquarter, Hong Kong, will be reduced in size. For STAR India, this means a direct reporting of Uday Shankar, CEO of STAR India, to James Murdoch, News Corporation’s Chairman and Chief Executive (Europe and Asia). Earlier, Shankar was reporting to Aiello.
Following the restructuring, STAR India will manage sales and distribution of News Corporation channels in India – a total of 19 channels in eight languages. In addition, STAR India will manage News Corporation’s interests in seven ventures, including DTH operator Tata Sky, cable system Hathway, channel distributor STAR Den, news channel operator MCCS, the south Indian broadcast business of Asianet channels and STAR Vijay, film producer, and distributor Fox STAR Studios India and Star CJ Home Shopping.
“Uday Shankar, Chief Executive Officer of STAR India since April 2007, will now report directly to Mr Murdoch. In addition, he will oversee STAR’s sales and distribution offices in the Middle East, the UK and the US. Mr Shankar will also gain responsibility for managing the sales and distribution of all FOX-branded channels in India,” the statement said.
Also, as part of this restructuring exercise, FIC will now look after all the English channels that were under the wings of STAR. Effectively, this means the National Geographic Channel, STAR World, STAR Movies, Fox History & Entertainment, and the four new channels — National Geographic HD, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Adventure and Nat Geo Music — will come under the fold of FIC.
“The changes are designed to support continued growth of each unit and result in a reduction in the size of its regional operations in Hong Kong,” an official statement from News Corporation said. “We are now re-shaping a big, regional organisation into three highly-focused business units, each of which will be intensely competitive in its target marketplace,” James Murdoch said in the statement.