LEADER: A little too early to celebrate success

If News Corporation and AOL Time Warner succeed in landing in China, they are likely to change Asia's television landscape quite dramatically. Both have been tenacious in their efforts to break into the world's most populous market; News Corp more than its rival. The Murdoch-owned media giant even dropped BBC from its line-up of Star programmes when the British broadcaster aired a series of critical documentaries about China's political and social woes. Despite the recent announcement, it seems somewhat premature to crow about the deal - the prize for now is broadcast rights for southern, not the whole of China, and that is still under negotiation. The worry is that it could take just as long - Star spent the better part of the last decade wooing China - to scoop up broadcast rights for the rest of the mainland. When that happens, the two global media giants will naturally claim first mover advantage. Although in the mainland , the first one in doesn't neccessarily have an advantage - later entrants at least have the benefit of picking up valuable lessons from the early birds for traversing the many minefields that make up China's business scene. Certainly in TV, the jig-saw is far from complete with China only in the early stages of overhauling its TV industry. But the two deals should excite rivals like Viacom, Discovery and Hallmark, and spark a scramble for an audience with China's broadcast authorities. But there is an obstacle to mining China's pot of gold. In return for opening the door to Guangdong, China has insisted that the pair carry its national broadcaster CCTV in the US. But CCTV is largely seen as the Chinese Government's propaganda arm and this demand has the makings of a political hot potato. Which may explain why details of the negotiations were announced before the deals were completed. In all probability, China was testing the waters to gauge US public reaction before moving on. The deal is far from done.

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