Phoenix TV lands in Vancouver
China's version of CNN is watched by over 140 million viewers in China,
18 million in U.S.
  
Joanne Lee-Young
VancouverSun.com
Monday, January 28, 2008

China's version of CNN, a 24-hour Chinese-language news and entertainment channel watched by over 140 million viewers in China and more than 18 million in the U.S., has officially arrived in Vancouver.

Phoenix Satellite Television, with nearly 800 employees and a market cap of over $800 million US, was started in 1996 in Hong Kong as a partnership between Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Liu Changle, an ex-Chinese People's Liberation Army soldier turned media mogul.

The Los Angeles-based CEO of Phoenix's North American subsidiary came to Vancouver to launch its presence on Shaw TV's multicultural channel.

"Vancouver is one of the top five markets for us in North America," said Wu Xiaoyong in a phone interview. "In the last five to eight years, Vancouver has seen the arrival of a lot of new immigrants from mainland China who know our service."

In addition to beaming a cable signal to Vancouver, Wu said that Phoenix is in the midst of establishing a Canadian corporate entity that will be based in Vancouver.

Wu will return to Vancouver in March to work with lawyers and local partners and staff. Toronto might have been a choice -- viewers there have had access to Phoenix programming via Rogers Cable Communications since 2006, and Phoenix has some reporting staff there -- but Wu said Vancouver was picked for its proximity to Los Angeles and to China, and because of its growing market of viewers.

Chinese-language speakers in Vancouver are already served by programs on channels run by Fairchild TV, Talentvision, (both owned by Richmond-based Thomas Fung's The Fairchild Group) Channel M and Shaw Multicultural.

These offer some programming sourced from Greater China, but Wu maintained that their "content is quite different. Mostly, it is locally produced for Chinese audiences and focuses on local issues and current events. Phoenix provides more international coverage of events. We have the resources to do live broadcasting from Greater China. With local media, they can mostly only offer a local reaction to, for example, presidential elections in Taiwan."

Wu added: "The population here can handle more than just one or two channels. You can say that Fairchild already has two channels and that is enough, but that may not be the opinion of the consumer."

He may have a point. For Chinese-language viewers, Phoenix is a unique product on several levels.

While state-owned television in China tends to focus myopically on domestic affairs, Phoenix pioneered the country's media coverage of worldwide events such as the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., the war in Iraq, and presidential elections in the U.S.

Just as CNN reports on the world from a very American perspective, and the BBC from a British one, Phoenix offers an increasingly worldly Chinese audience, both at home and overseas -- a distinctly Chinese take.

"They are a very recognized Chinese brand and they are practically all over the world," said James Ho, the Vancouver-based Chinese-language media executive who founded Channel M and backs other newspapers and radio channels. "They have satellite presence and reporters everywhere except for the central part of Africa."

Within the realms of China's borders, Phoenix has also distinguished itself by more aggressively covering sensitive stories compared to its state-owned counterparts who, for example, obediently shied away from issuing critical public-health news during the 2003 SARS epidemic in China and blacked out evocative images of large-scale political protests in Hong Kong.

Even though Phoenix is technically a publicly listed company in Hong Kong, Murdoch and Liu still hold a large chunk of it, although News Corp sold half of its 40-per-cent stake to China Mobile, China's largest cellular service provider, in June 2006.

To Western corporate eyes, Murdoch's name may seem like the heavyweight, but in China, it was Liu's high-level government connections and overseas business contacts and wealth in petroleum, real estate and infrastructure, that smoothed Phoenix's path.

Wu, who heads Phoenix's North American venture from Los Angeles, married his overseas school and work experience with top connections at home. He is the son of Wu Xueqian, who was a prominent vice-premier and China's foreign minister in the mid-1980s.

Even with all this, there are some specific challenges for Phoenix's initial expansion into the Vancouver market. Wu is aiming for around 10,000 subscribers, a figure that he notes is a conservative target.

"The Chinese population in Vancouver is about 300,000 to 400,000. So, let's say there are 100,000 families. It's a matter of persuading some of these to take up Phoenix."

The most obvious hurdles, according to Wu, are: "We don't have a programming guide; there hasn't been much information out there; and the pricing is quite high, though that isn't really in our control."

The Shaw service costs $16 per month, but to get this, consumers must first pay for a more basic bundle that includes access to Fairchild's channels. "In many ways, we are helping Fairchild and spreading [the market]," said Wu.

Thomas Fung, CEO of The Fairchild Group, did not return a request for comment by deadline.

Ho, the Vancouver media executive, agreed: "Being a media person, I might, on the one hand, think less competition is better. But media is a different business. Media should bring different voices, different diversity. There should be lots of choice, good or bad, it's not up to us to judge. It's up to the viewers."

Ho added: "It is quite significant for Phoenix to set up here. It is a huge commitment for a foreign-owned media company. I take my hat off to them and encourage them.

He emphasized that while Vancouver's Cantonese-speaking population was still the "bread and butter" for Chinese-language media, Phoenix's main target is the city's Mandarin-speakers, an up-and-coming demographic that all players are tracking.

"You have to be prepared right now. Phoenix is very wise to come now instead of waiting."

jlee-young@png.canwest.com

http://www.canada.com/vancouve.....3476b1f8&k=15748