STAR’s Crowley

April 2007

STAR launched in 1991 with
just five channels, but today it’s the giant of the Asian cable and satellite
industry, with a portfolio of entertainment, news, music and sports networks
that collectively reach more than 300 million viewers in 53 countries across
the region. As executive VP of content, Ross Crowley oversees such ­services
as the pan-regional general-entertainment offering STAR World and the music
network Channel [V], as well as STAR’s interactive and mobile activities.
Crowley understands the importance of original content in continuing to broaden
the group’s reach—a strategy that has allowed STAR (which is owned by
News Corporation) to build up a catalogue of 20,000 hours of Indian and Chinese
programming. He tells TV Asia Pacific about expanding STAR’s services in the
digital age.

TV ASIA PACIFIC:
Tell me about your original-production initiatives.

CROWLEY: One of
the two big markets for us is India—that has been the case for five or
six years now. We’re doing thousands of hours of soaps, [the dance competition] Nach Baliye. We’re supporting
four channels there now. The second market for us would be Taiwan. STAR Chinese
Channel, which is a wholly local-language Taiwanese general-entertainment
channel, and Channel [V] Taiwan, have just had a breakout in the last year with
clever, original variety formulas, really, really well targeted to the local
market. We’ve got three formulas there: Gossip Queen, Blackie’s Teenage Club and Lollipop. Separate to that we do original production in mainland China and in
Indonesia.

TV ASIA PACIFIC:
Are you distributing that content on the international market?

CROWLEY:
Absolutely. We have a division called Fortune Star Entertainment that handles
all of our content, our Chinese movie library and all of the Indian soaps. We
are finding [increased demand for that content] with the web streaming
[services] and most recently with the launch of HD DVD. We are restoring all of
the Chinese films that we can for HD DVD. That’s a catalogue of some 700 titles
that have a new life.

TV ASIA PACIFIC:
Are your original productions being done just for specific markets, or are you
doing shows that can be aired pan-regionally?

CROWLEY: The
broad principle is we produce it locally and then we feed it to the
expats—that’s non-Western expats all around Asia. We feed the Indian
channels to the Indian expats in the Middle East and Hong Kong. We feed the
Chinese channels to Chinese expats outside of mainland China and Taiwan.

TV ASIA PACIFIC:
How is the distribution for STAR’s portfolio of channels in the region?

CROWLEY: Of our
digital footprint, which covers all of Asia except Japan, it’s fair to say
we’re in all of the markets we want to be in. And in the bigger markets, we are
with the partners we want to be with.

TV ASIA PACIFIC:
How much of a problem is signal piracy?

CROWLEY: To be
honest, signal piracy is not the biggest issue. It’s more the earlier window
piracy [bootleg DVDs and illegal online downloads] that diminishes the value of
the content. We are working at every level, with all of the industry bodies and
with governments to stamp out early-window piracy, DVD and whatnot.

TV ASIA PACIFIC:
What opportunities have the new broadband and IPTV platforms presented?

CROWLEY:
Broadband cable, broadband set-top television, is offering huge growth. The
next level is broadband web, the PC streaming part, and there are huge
limitations. In Asia, there’s still a technology backlog. In India, which is
our biggest market, we’ve launched [on indya.com] a full streaming broadband
[platform] for all of our original productions—that’s thousands of hours.
It’s primarily for the external market. So it’s Indian television for Indians
outside of India.

TV ASIA PACIFIC:
What are you doing in the mobile space?

CROWLEY: Asia
will go wireless before it is wired—they’ll kind of jump over that whole
stage of cable. As such, there is a convergence of what mobile devices are and
what web devices are. We are already there in a lot of our key markets. We have
some web [services] and we’re exploring what’s available in mobile bandwidth at
the moment. In India [our mobile service is called] STAR 7827 and you can get
just about anything on that, ring tones, wallpapers.

[The challenge is] you’ve
got 20 to 30 countries all growing with different cultures, different
technology rates, different penetrations, different economies, and you’ve got
to work with each one of them on a case-by-case basis.

TV ASIA PACIFIC:
How important are off-screen events to solidifying your brands across the
region?

CROWLEY: In
India, we do a lot of celebrity awards. In the rest of the region, we do a lot
of music events. Channel [V], the live music brand, does awards in mainland
China, and concerts in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, India. We
either directly host them ourselves or we co-promote. I think STAR is the
biggest concert co-promoter in Asia.