History
The company was launched in 1 August 1990 as part of Hutchison Whampoa group. It started broadcasting five television channels in 1 January 1991 from AsiaSat 1 Satellite. Launch of The STAR TV Network pioneered satellite television in Asia and in the process catalyzed explosive growth in the media industry across the entire region.
In 1993, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation purchased 63.6% of STAR for over $500 million, followed by the purchase of the remaining 36.4% in 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"After this, the former prime minister Li Peng requested and obtained the ban of satellite dishes throughout the country. Subsequently the STAR TV network dropped the BBC channels from its satellite offer. This, and many ensuing declaration from Murdoch, led critics to believe the businessman was striving to appease the Chinese government in order to have the ban lifted.
In August 2009, STAR Broadcasting Corporation revealed a restructure to its Asian broadcast businesses into four units - STAR India, Star Greater China, Star Select and Fox International Channels Asia.
Read more about this topic: STAR (Greater China)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“There is a history in all men’s lives,
Figuring the natures of the times deceased,
The which observed, a man may prophesy,
With a near aim, of the main chance of things
As yet not come to life.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)