News Corp has high hopes for Chinese version of "Friends" By Jonah Greenberg
BEIJING (Reuters) - Move over Ross and Rachel, here come Tang Jinsong and Su Feifei.
Media giant News Corp is hoping a Chinese-made version of the hit U.S. sitcom "Friends" will win fans when the company launches a long-coveted local-language channel in China in the next few weeks.
Called "Joyful Youth", the newly filmed programme will be among a host of locally produced talk shows, dramas and game shows that News Corp's Hong Kong-based unit Star Group will offer one million cable TV viewers in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.
The new channel, called Xingkong Weishi, or Star Satellite TV, marks News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch's biggest victory to date in his long and sometimes tumultuous courtship of China and its massive but tightly restricted media market.
Late last year, China gave permission for cable distribution in Guangdong to three foreign media companies -- Xingkong, Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite TV, which is also 38 percent owned by News Corp., and AOL Time Warner's China Entertainment TV.
The move marked the first time foreign channels gained legal access to ordinary Chinese homes. News Corp and other foreign broadcasters have been restricted for decades to hotels above three stars and residence compounds approved for foreigners.
"The new channel is the most important initiative we have going on at this time" in China, said News Corp broadcasting executive Jamie Davis, who is heading up the channel.
CAPTURING THE HEARTS
Now comes the hard part. Building on lessons Star learned in India, Davis is banking on local language programming to win viewers for what it hopes will become a national channel reaching China's 100 million homes with cable TV.
Never mind that Star's new channel will carry Mandarin language programming in a mostly Cantonese-speaking province, or that Davis himself speaks neither language.
"In order to really capture the hearts of the audience here, you must be local. And that means to speak the local language," Davis, a 35-year-old Chicago native, told Reuters in an interview.
Xingkong Weishi will be limited at first to airing in the Pearl River Delta region. The agreement also requires News Corp to carry an English channel of state broadcaster China Central Television on its cable systems in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
But the company hopes its landing rights will eventually be expanded beyond Guangdong.
China's Communist leaders regard the media as crucial to helping maintain social stability, a top concern as China rapidly reforms its economy and braces for leadership reshuffles starting later this year.
The foreign media firms hope the agreement giving them access in Guangdong is a signal that Beijing is willing to relax, at least partly, its grip on China's airwaves. But neither Star's Xingkong nor AOL's CETV plan to show news programmes.
"In the long run, yes, I want to be national," said Davis, who in 1994 came to News Corp's Fox Sports via CBS Sports.
"I wouldn't put in this kind of money if I thought that 25 years from now I'm still going to be in Guangdong province," he said, referring to costly plans to produce more than 700 hours of original content in the channel's first year.
LOCAL CONTENT
Starting with "Joyful Youth", the Star channel will cater to viewers in the coveted 18-to-45 year-old demographic.
Banking on parent News Corp's experience from its BSkyB network in Britain and Fox TV in the United States, Xingkong will produce 60 percent of its programming in China.
"If you want to hit the masses, which is how I believe you're really going to be able to make money in the market, it's by entertaining and capturing the hearts of everybody. And if you do that, you've got to have local programming tailor-made and catered to the local audience," Davis said.
By contrast, AOL's CETV last week unveiled a new lineup of "mostly acquired and repackaged shows" from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan and Korea, a CETV executive said.
Grace Wong, a spokeswoman for AOL's Turner International, said CETV would boost its amount of original programming this year from about 20 percent currently.
"We will have 250 additional hours of original programming once we finalise our strategic alliance with a local Chinese partner," Wong said.
News Corp's Mandarin offerings may have to work overtime to win viewers in the Cantonese-speaking Pearl River Delta, where programmes from Hong Kong's Television Broadcasts Ltd and Asia Television reign supreme, analysts said.
Shows from the two Hong Kong channels, mostly carried illegally by Guangdong cable operators, command roughly 60 percent of viewing time there, said Kristian Jhamb, an analyst with JP Morgan.
"In terms of pushing a Mandarin channel, they might not have too much success in Guangdong," Jhamb said.
Davis called the decision to broadcast in Mandarin "a long-term play".
While Guangdong, one of China's most affluent provinces, generates $320 million in TV advertising sales each year, access to the larger market is considered the real prize.
Xingkong, which will be unencrypted and can be received in China with a satellite dish and an off-the-shelf decoder, may seek to tap into that market immediately, industry sources say.
Like Phoenix, which has for years claimed more than 40 million viewers across China, Xingkong may attempt to sell advertising on the back of a national, if unauthorised, audience, they said.