World Press Review: A battle for Asia's eyes and minds - television stations: "A battle for Asia's eyes and minds - television stations

In the balmy blue waters off Corsica last July, Richard Li sailed aboard Rupert Murdoch's yacht Morning Glory and turned over 64 percent of his Satellite Television Asia Region (STAR) satellite service to the Australian-born publishing mogul.
Li's $525-million deal was eclipsed by news in October that Murdoch had sold his South China Morning Post of Hong Kong in order to focus on the satellite race. For the experts, there could be no better evidence that the future of news media is in the skies.
The leading characters in this battle are Li, scion of Hong Kong's richest family; the flamboyant Murdoch; the ever-inscrutable Robert Kuok of Malaysia; and a living legend of Hong Kong, Sir Run Run Shaw. The prize is nothing less than tele-media supremacy over Asia and, with it, the power to influence the opinions of 3 billion people.
Three years ago, Li envisioned millions of Asians watching the same programs via satellite. The second son of Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing, he was handed $300 million to start up his pet pastime. As the deputy chairman of HutchVision, a subsidiary of the Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. conglomerate, Li astounded the pundits with the quick rise of STAR TV After only three short years, STAR is watched in 12 million households.
STAR TV rocketed past existing media due to its ability to beam radio signals through the transponders loaded on Asiasat 1 (Asia Satellite Telecommunications). The satellite, a joint venture of the Li family's Hutchison group and British and Beijing companies, has a 38"footprint," or broadcast area, spanning from Japan to Egypt, Russia to Indonesia.... continued :
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