BASU FINALLY DEPARTS STAR TV, TO SET UP NEW NEWS CORP VENTURE

The power struggle at the top has finally come to an end. Star TV India chairman R. Basu is finally hanging up his gloves and moving out of the network that he was associated with from November 1996. However, not totally, as he is continuing with Star TV as non-executive chairman. Chief executive Peter Mukerjea takes over all the functions that came under R. Basu which includes, news and current affairs and the now aborted DTH venture ISkyB, from 1 January 2000.

Basu will be setting up a new company in an equity partnership with News Corp called Broadcast Worldwide Private Limited (BWPL). The company will help create multimedia content and other related activities in India. The focus according to insiders at Star TV India will be on the Internet and regional language channels which the company will develop for News Corp. Language channels in Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi and Gujarati are planned.

What does this mean for Star TV in India? Well, for starters, it will be in a position to focus its resources on developing its Hindi language services. Since DTH will now come under Mukerjea too, he will be able to amortise costs across the two companies and reduce them. Some rationalisation will take place. It is not known if executive director Urmila Gupta will continue with the DTH venture because she was a Basu handpicked candidate. The future of another DD professional Shukla Das is also not known.

As far as Basu is concerned some skeptics view his lateral move as a gradual distancing of the man from News Corp. "Don't be surprised if you find out in the future that he has resigned," says a wag. "He did this to one of his editors/executives when he charged him with setting up television channels in the US a few years ago. The executive who had fallen out of favour with him was left to fend for himself with little help coming his way from News Corp. He finally resigned in disgust."
It's up to Basu to prove that it is not history that is not playing out again.