MEDIA MATTERS
Outfoxed?
SEVANTI NINAN
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Rupert Murdoch is a marathon runner ... . A look at his operations in India.
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REUTERS
Rupert Murdoch ... TV is where the money is.
IN the 10 years since Rupert Murdoch first set foot in India to promote his newly acquired media interests, Star India, earlier called Star TV, has come a long way. During the current financial year ending on June 30, 2004, its revenues have grown by 30 per cent. After years of losses, it has just begun making profits. According to the third quarter financial statement of NewsCorp, Star's operating profits doubled on subscription and advertising gains made in India, while revenues grew by 12 per cent. Murdoch senior told analysts earlier this year, "India is very, very strong."
Just short of being top
Even those who periodically wail about big, bad Murdoch do not realise just how big his media operation in India now is. Currently, Star is around Rs. 100 crores short of becoming the country's biggest media company. It rules the ratings in the TV entertainment business, and has successfully set the agenda for what the cable-connected Indian must consume: glossily mounted shows that hook viewers. It has also set the agenda for competitors by creating genres that now define television entertainment. Having got out of its initial partnership with Zee, it has pushed that rival down to No. 3 position. And having conquered the North, it is set to move South, declaring that that is where 48 per cent of the Indian cable market is. Thanks to Mr. M, we watch more TV than ever before. That his product is neither elevating nor edifying is beside the point. Nobody else's is, either.
Dominance has been achieved, but the kind of power Mr. Murdoch would have liked to command through his media empire still eludes him. On the contrary, he is still in a position where his efforts at expansion are stymied or scuttled with government compliance. The Rs. 1,600 crore Direct To Home (DTH) project jointly proposed with the Tatas is still awaiting clearance. TV entertainment has been Star India's only big success. Its efforts to bypass ownership regulations and enter the radio scene have come under scrutiny. Its internet forays got nowhere. Its earlier DTH foray was scuttled by the competition. It has not entered the print media scene. But none of this matters too much, because TV is where the money is.
What would have counted is the clout wielded by Murdoch's TV news channel but that operation is currently going nowhere after Star was forced to disinvest to comply with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) regulations. Two recent developments have been telling. Ravina Raj Kohli, the woman who was supposed to revamp Star News, after it terminated its content provider arrangement with NDTV, quit last fortnight, after new majority stake owner Aveek Sarkar made her redundant a while ago.
The second development was hugely ironical. NDTV, with whom Star parted company in March 2003 alleging that the content deal was much too generous to the former, and claiming that it needed to have editorial control, has just emerged No. 1 in ratings and revenue as one news channel after another declared its latest quarter results. This content company started two news channels, in English and Hindi, hired a Star executive on its marketing side, and outperformed Star with its fledgling news operation. Star News is now No. 3 in ratings, and sometimes No. 4 depending on which part of the country you are talking about. The man on whose behalf Tony Blair intercedes in Italy, and whose news organisation rallies behind Bush in the United States, is simply not getting there when it comes to news dominance in India.
Elsewhere, Murdoch's path to influence has been the news business through his newspapers in the United Kingdom and through TV news in the U.S. Earlier this month in the U.S., a documentary called Outfoxed! opened to predictable applause and dismissal — the first from liberal baiters of Rupert Murdoch's American news channel, Fox News, and the latter from beneficiaries of this sensational, right wing news channel including those in the Bush administration. The film is an unabashed hatchet job, using pirated Fox News footage and interviewing people in and outside the channel, some of whom speak on condition of anonymity. It sets out to unveil what has never been a secret: that Murdoch uses his American news operation to push a political agenda.
The news channel that Mr. Murdoch owns in our part of the world is rather a different proposition.
Wrong moves in news
Murdoch's news agenda here was to have no ideology except a commercial one. Keep on the right side of the government and do not do anything to rock the boat. But thanks to its overall policy of supporting the party in power, it finds itself on the back foot after the change in government.
News is the one area where Star India has made a series of wrong moves, fundamental and tactical.
Until ABP came aboard earlier this year as a majority stakeholder, Star News, post-NDTV, was being run by people in Hong Kong and India with no experience at all in the news business. Its president Ravina Raj Kohli was brought following her success with entertainment programming at Sony. In interviews she laid out her formula for what Star News would be: We are very sensitive to family values. Star News is conscious of the fact that in India we are catering to the Indians, we are in the Indian space. We cannot go into any areas, visually or editorially, that disturb the equilibrium of being an Indian. Star News is not into looking for negative stories. I'm not into propagating the myth that this is an awful country. I'd rather celebrate India.
American pie stuff, which someone should have told her does not work in the news business. The emphasis on non-political news, and perhaps a desire by Star's headquarters to keep control, also led to the decision to base Star News in Mumbai, which added to costs. Star News costs far more annually than either Aaj Tak or Zee. The new editorial approach seemed to work for a while, with Star News becoming number two in the initial months of parting with NDTV, but it has floundered since. The fact that within a year of getting started the revamped Star News got a majority partner who decided to be hands on, has not helped it stabilise. Moreover, the channel now needs a further infusion of funds even as works on improving Star India's equation with the Congress.
Currently, Star News is an uneasy marriage between an international partner whose people in Hong Kong and Mumbai are new to the news business, and an Indian media partner new to the TV business. Clout seems a bit distant, and the competition can only smile. But as his entertainment business has demonstrated, Rupert Murdoch is a marathon runner with staying power.
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