STAR India
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Formerly called
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STAR TV India Private Limited |
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| Subsidiary of 21st Century Fox | |
| Industry | Mass media |
| Founded | 1 August 1991 |
| Founders | |
| Headquarters | Star House, Urmi Estate, 95, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel (West), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India |
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Area served
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South Asia |
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Key people
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| Products |
Broadcasting Film Entertainment Web portals |
| Parent | 21st Century Fox |
| Website | www |
Star India Private Limited, formerly STAR TV India is an Indian media and entertainment company, owned by 21st Century Fox. It is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. STAR India's portfolio includes 58 channels in eight languages.
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 and Nickelodeon (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 bought 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 1993 News Corporation purchased 63.6% of STAR for over $500 million, followed by the purchase of the remaining 36.4% on 1 January 1993. Murdoch declared that:
"(telecommunications) have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere ... satellite broadcasting makes it possible for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels"
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. 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%). 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. 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."Peter Mukerjea was Chief Executive Officer of STAR India from 1999 to 2007.
In August 2009, STAR Broadcasting Corporation revealed a restructure to its Asian broadcast businesses into three units – STAR India, STAR, and Fox International Channels Asia.
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