But is talk of Asia’s answer to CNN so far-fetched?
Importantly, the group — Malaysia’s Sin Chew Media, Nanyang Press Holdings and Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Enterprise — will not be short of cash. Malaysian Chinese businessman Tan Sri Tiong, the architect of the merger, owns both Sin Chew and Ming Pao and, among other businesses, a vast logging empire in Sarawak and Papua New Guinea.
Tan’s intention to float Ming Pao on the Malaysian stock exchange (it is already listed in Hong Kong) could fund further acquisitions. The grand plan is to launch its flagship newspapers in every market where there are lots of Chinese speakers, with potential moves into online, TV and radio to follow.
“The big idea is to link the world’s Chinese-speaking communities,” says Rita Lim, executive director of Sin Chew. “The likes of CNN have dominated the international media scene for a long time. This is our opportunity to give the world an Asian perspective.”
The group already has a sizeable footprint beyond Hong Kong and Malaysia on which to build. Ming Pao is in the US and Canada via the Ming Pao Daily News and Ming Pao Weekly, and Sin Chew exists in Indonesia and Cambodia through content-sharing deals. Its titles cater for a diversity of the 60 million ethnic Chinese who live outside China (and the swell of Westerners now taking Mandarin lessons). Sin Chew Daily has the broadest and biggest readership, while China Press targets a blue-collar audience and Nanyang is business-oriented.
Esther Chan, media services director at Carat Malaysia, notes: “Taking a cue from Media Prima (Malaysia’s largest media group), you can expect to see Sin Chew as the flag-bearer — like Media Prima’s TV3 — serving the masses, and the other titles will be segmented to avoid editorial overlap.”
Media buyers think it will be at least a year before the new company will consider international expansion or new launches. For now, it must get the deal past competition regulators (which shouldn’t be too difficult, given Nanyang’s Government connections), restructuring and trying to win at home.
The latter will not be easy. Malaysia’s newspaper market is dominated by The Star, an English-language title which takes 30 per cent of newspaper ad spend. “Ninety per cent of Malaysian Chinese (of which there are seven million in Malaysia) read newspapers, but only 65 per cent read Chinese newspapers — and the number is falling,” observes Bhaskar Jaiswal, associate director of Starcom Malaysia. “The Star gets much more advertising support — and from upmarket advertisers — because it is read by Indians, Malays as well as Chinese.”
The key battleground, says Jaiswal, is the web, where Chinese readers increasingly go for news. “Sin Chew’s internet businesses are not very strong. If it can get its internet strategy right at home, it has a better chance of growing its brands abroad.”
