New Delhi: Rupert Murdoch knows something about power and how to wield it. In Britain, the media magnate's backing was long seen as a prerequisite for anyone hoping to become prime minister; in the United States Murdoch's Fox News has helped drive debate and the growth of the right-wing Tea Party.
In fast-growing Asia, though, Murdoch has considerably less clout.
Take India, where the 80-year-old has made frequent, whirlwind visits over the past decade.
"Whenever he came to India he felt he was entitled to an audience with the prime minister," said Sanjay Baru, a former media advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who recalls a brief meeting between Murdoch and the Indian premier in 2005 during which Murdoch "sat for a few minutes and talked about what was happening in the world at the time and a few nice things about the Indian economy and then left."
"Afterwards, the prime minister turned to me and asked 'why did he want to see me?' and I said 'I guess he wanted to be able to tell everyone that he saw you," Baru added with a chuckle.
As pressure mounts on Murdoch on both sides of the Atlantic following a phone hacking scandal that has killed plans for a full buy-out of satellite television operator BSkyB , many point to Asia as News Corp's best hope of growth. But the meeting between Murdoch and Singh illustrates the Australian-born businessman's predicament there: Murdoch might be able to get in to meet a prime minister, but his influence is limited.
In India, Murdoch's television network Star India remains a gem in News Corp's global portfolio with 400 million weekly viewers in one of the world's fastest growing markets.
At the same time, tight foreign media ownership rules, a quagmire of bureaucracy, powerful Indian media rivals with deep political sway and an entrenched suspicion of foreign media entrants have slowed Murdoch's expansion in the subcontinent.
China, too, has proved troublesome. Beijing introduced fresh curbs on foreign broadcasters in 2005, limiting access to its 1.4 billion people. Last August, Murdoch's protracted struggle to crack the country's hermetic, highly censored media market seemed to finally lose steam when News Corp sold off its controlling stake in three key TV channels.
With Murdoch now facing a parliamentary inquiry in Britain, an FBI probe in the United States, and a possible review of media laws in Australia, some say he might face fresh scrutiny in India and Asia.
"After what's happened, I think everybody would look twice before saying yes (to Murdoch)," Baru told. "There will be more questions asked now than there was in the past."
Early promise
When Rupert Murdoch first entered India in the mid-1990s with the launch of Star India, the network's mix of cricket, MTV, Bollywood and soap operas proved a wildly popular cocktail of entertainment with many of the country's 1.2 billion people.
Murdoch saw Asia's potential at a time when regional broadcasting wasn't considered viable across a highly fragmented and culturally diverse region. In 1993, he bought a majority stake in a fledgling Hong Kong-headquartered network called Star TV that was launched just two years earlier by Richard Li, the son of billionaire Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing.
As with his seemingly risky early bet on BSKyB in the United Kingdom, Murdoch's timing was good, riding India's surging television viewership growth to transform Star into one of the leading regional broadcasters in Asia, where it now reaches 65 countries.
While Murdoch's newspapers in Britain fomented an aggressive and profitable era of tabloid journalism, he's largely escaped controversy in India by beaming tamer, lighter entertainment television fare, tailored to India's conservative and religious social fabric.
Suhel Seth, a media commentator and advertising industry player, said the tabloid scandal won't hurt Murdoch's Asia properties "at all. He's got an extensive, varied and very enriched portfolio of channels. He's got some remarkable joint ventures as far as regional channels are concerned."
Murdoch's revenues from Australasia, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia were around $5.4 billion, or around 16.5 percent of News Corp's total revenues in 2010, a relatively small percentage but one with substantial growth potential.
News Corp provides no specific breakdown of its earnings from Star India or Star Asia, but media consultancies such as Media Partners Asia estimate Star India made $106 million in profits last year off revenues of $545 million, glowing results in a market with rampant piracy of cable signals and low fees.
"Star India saw particularly robust advertising growth and we continue to develop market-leading capabilities in that important and burgeoning region," wrote Murdoch in News Corp's 2010 annual report.
"With recent investments in Asianet and other regional channels in India, as well as Rotana in the Middle East, we are positioning ourselves to drive and capture growth in these rapidly developing markets," Murdoch added.
With a cash war-chest of $12 billion now potentially available from his aborted bid for BSkyB, Murdoch could make a renewed strategic push into Asia.
"The geographic importance of Asia will substantially increase (for News Corp) and be significantly driven by the India market," said Vivek Couto, executive director of Media Partners Asia. "Asia now makes around $1.2 billion of sales (for News Corp). It could be substantially more - they could set up a cash reserve for more bolt-on acquisitions in India."
Consultancy KPMG's 2011 report "Hitting the High Notes" estimates India's media and entertainment revenues will nearly double to $28.6 billion by 2015, with advertising expenditure growth of 17 percent in 2010 across the country's more than 550 television channels and thousands of daily newspapers.
Repairing China Damage
But growth won't come easily.
China is a good case study. In 1993, poised to leverage Star TV for a leap into the world's most-populous nation, Murdoch angered Beijing's control-obsessed leaders by saying satellite television and new telecommunications "have proven an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere".
In the ensuing years, Murdoch scrambled to repair the damage. In 1994 he dropped the BBC from his Star TV network and he later scrapped a contract with publishing arm HarperCollins to publish the memoirs of Chris Patten, Hong Kong's last governor, who was a thorn in Beijing's side.
His latest wife, Wendi Deng, whom he married in 1999, is Chinese.
Despite securing a cordial meeting with China's then president Jiang Zemin in 1998, China slapped fresh curbs on foreign broadcasters in the mid 2000s, cramping the ambitions of foreign media such as Star, Disney and Time Warner in a still politically sensitive sector.
Last year Murdoch sold off his controlling stake in three Chinese TV channels.
Things have been easier in India, where foreign ownership rules allow 100 percent ownership of broadcast and media outlets focused on softer lifestyle and entertainment publications and broadcasters. At the same time, much tighter rules cap foreign ownership of Indian print news media at just 26 percent despite aggressive campaigning from international media outlets such as the Financial Times' Pearson Group.
Those rules are unlikely to be relaxed anytime soon. Powerful local media titans such as Indu Jain of Bennett & Coleman, which runs India's largest circulation English newspaper the Times of India; Kalanithi Maran of the Sun Network and Zee Group's Subhash Chandra have too much to lose to allow someone like Murdoch to compete.
"For all the lobbying he's done there's been a very substantive anti-Murdoch lobby," said media commentator Seth. "There's been lobbying on both fronts but obviously the Indian government is more vulnerable and scared of the local media."
Yet that hasn't stopped Murdoch from pushing deeper into local media markets. He has made a fresh $100 million investment into Indian regional television channels under the Star umbrella. He owns 26 percent of the popular Hindi-language news channel Star News, meeting the needs of many of India's 138 million TV households hungry for news in local dialects, especially in rural hamlets and smaller tier cities.
Tata tie-up
In the mid-2000s, Murdoch spent years courting approval for a pay television tie-up with his close friend and Indian billionaire Ratan Tata.
Some media commentators say Dayanidhi Maran, a former government minister now ensnared in a multi-billion dollar telecoms licensing scandal, may have stalled Murdoch's bid at the time to protect his media magnate brother's south India TV empire.
Murdoch eventually succeeded in launching the pay TV service with Tata in mid-2006, taking a 20 percent stake of Tata SKY, a direct-to-home satellite broadcasting service.
Overcoming the entrenched fear of foreigners interfering with the domestic news and political agenda will not be easy.
"When I was minister of information and broadcasting, the ground rules were very clear, the foreign investor would have no editorial control whatsoever, and that continues," said Ravi Shankar Prasad, a former Indian minister of broadcasting.
"This is an ongoing process. India is different from the England or the US A foreigner cannot become the owner of a media network here, and that's a big safety valve."
The hurdles faced by Murdoch aren't unique to the media industry. India enforces restrictions on foreign investment everywhere from the pension and insurance sector to retail, hampering desperately needed foreign direct investment flows to help boost patchy nationwide infrastructure and sustain India's double-digit economic growth.
Wal-Mart, the US retail giant, and Carrefour have tried for years to gain unfettered access to India, which is often touted as the next great global consumer market worth an estimated $450 billion.
Little wonder Murdoch's keen to expand in India. While newspapers struggle with digital rivals and shrinking advertising revenues around the world there have been fewer such problems in the subcontinent KPMG forecasting newspaper advertising growth of 13 percent annually up to 2015.
"This is a growing market, everywhere else the newspaper market is shrinking. In India it's linked to literacy. As literacy improves profitability is very high, you have regional languages, you have advertising spreads. I always see India in the next 30 or 40 years being an extremely lucrative market," Seth said.
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