Published September 3, 2009

KL denies it is reviewing pay-TV operator's licence

Report had said plan was to make Astro carry more pro-govt content

By S JAYASANKARAN
IN KUALA LUMPUR

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KUALA Lumpur has denied a news portal's report that it was reviewing the licence for a Malaysian satellite pay-TV broadcaster in a move to make it carry more pro-government content.

Envy of rivals: Astro has exclusive licence to supply direct-to-home satellite TV and radio services

The Malaysian Insider news-portal had said yesterday that the Information Ministry was reviewing Astro All-Asia Networks' licence in a bid to promote more programming favourable to the government.

But the government denied it. 'There is no such thing,' Reuters quoted an official familiar with the ministry's plans.

The media is tightly controlled in Malaysia and newspapers require a permit which is annually renewed. But the Internet has made nonsense of the regulation and a host of blogs and newsportals critical of the government have sprung up in recent years.

Indeed, the Internet was one of the reasons why the ruling National Front government stumbled to its worst ever loss in last year's general elections. It has also lost six straight by-elections in Peninsular Malaysia since March last year and may have been the reason why the Information Ministry briefly contemplated filtering the Internet. The plan was abandoned after Prime Minister Najib Razak nixed it.

Astro is 44 per cent owned by tycoon T Ananda Krishnan and 22 per cent by state agency Khazanah Nasional and incurs the envy of its competitors because it possesses an exclusive licence - until 2017 - to supply direct-to-home satellite TV and radio services. It was listed on the Kuala Lumpur stock exchange in 2003

Other competitors vying to supply pay-TV services through other means - cable or via the Internet - have failed largely because Astro locks in exclusive supply contracts with its content providers like Discovery, HBO and the BBC. Indeed, Astro's near-monopoly of the sports channels - because of its capacity to pay - has made it the target of attacks from envious competitors.

Not everyone in government is enamoured with the pay-TV operator though. The content on some of Astro news channels like Al Jazeera or BBC - interviews with opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim or coverage of demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur, for example - must grate on Kuala Lumpur's sensibilities.

But a senior Astro official told BT that there were 'no real issues.' He said that the company had been in talks with the government for 'almost a year' for migration to a new licence under the new multimedia act but stressed that the company 'would be no worse off' under the new licence.

'We are currently negotiating on the terms. They just want to make sure that we are on the same licence as all other TV stations,' Tammy Toh, Astro's head of communications told Reuters.

A second government official told Reuters that the talks related to Astro's regulatory environment, for example its ability to raise prices without reference to the government as it did recently when it raised the cost of its sports package.

That, however, seems unlikely. Astro's original licence allows the operator to increase prices of content - sports packages have risen astronomically in recent years - and the 'no worse off' clause insisted upon by Astro would make it hard for the government to regulate pricing.