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Other restrictions mean some Starry Sky programs don't quite match the realism of their Western prototypes. Although the judge on TV Court is genuine, the government wouldn't allow Her Honor to rule on real cases for fear of ceding sensitive legal issues to foreign TV executives. News Corp. has tried to add a sense of the unexpected by using nonprofessional actors and basing the episodes on actual Chinese court cases, but compared with Judge Judy, whose apoplectic reactions to evidence give her show a fierce moral compass, TV Court seems heavily scripted. "Look, she shed a tear!" says a producer as a character suing her sister over an inheritance grows lachrymose.
Still, the show is one of Starry Sky's most popular. And at least it's on the air. Censors were not so generous with a situation comedy called Joyful Youth, which was modeled on the American hit Friends. During the review process, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television gutted most of one episode in which male characters bemoan the small size of a neighbor's breasts. The state agency then refused to issue the series a broadcast permitalthough News Corp. had already shown several episodes without a permit, an embarrassing snafu that a company executive blames on "a paperwork problem" involving its production partner. Under censors' orders, News Corp. pulled Joyful Youth off the air.
Starry Sky's main competitor, AOL Time Warner-owned CETV, plays safer. Instead of trying to create lots of new programming for China, it relies on imported favorites, such as Tom and Jerry cartoons, a British cooking program and dubbed series from Korea and Taiwan. AOL also plans to expose the Chinese to American politicsHollywood-styleby broadcasting the Emmy Award-winning White House drama The West Wing to its Guangdong audience. "We're not hemming ourselves in by copying Western formats," says Steve Marcopoto, president of Turner International Asia-Pacific, Ltd.
So far, neither Starry Sky nor CETV is taking the Guangdong market by storm. The channels ranked 14th and 19th among viewers in January, according to rating agency CSM. Both channels are probably more popular than the numbers suggest, however. Because they are transmitted by satellite, they can be viewed by almost anyone in China with a satellite dish. The government doesn't allow individuals to own dishes, but many do so illegally, and small cable networks routinely offer the channels to subscribers even though it's technically forbidden. By some estimates, there are more than 40 million households with access via illegal dishes to otherwise unavailable TV programs. "We don't encourage this distribution," says a News Corp. executive, "but we can't stop it."
At any rate, it doesn't do the company much good. The gray-market audience doesn't help sell ads, partly because the number of additional viewers can't be quantified and partly because local cable operators strip out advertisements from the media giants' clients and splice in commercials from local businesses, picking up a nice though illicit revenue stream in the process. Indeed, there is a noticeable dearth of revenue-producing ads on the Starry Sky channel.
News Corp. officials decline to disclose ad revenues. But Davis insists Starry Sky will be profitable in three years. For one thing, he argues, co-producing shows locally is relatively cheap. In addition, Mandarin content could attract a huge global market that has yet to be tapped. "We're building a library that will become the backbone for channels in Chinese-speaking markets around the world," Davis says. He also expects the company will ultimately be granted the wider distribution rights it needs to reach a larger audience. "If I thought we'd be in Guangdong forever, it wouldn't make sense [to invest in programming]," he says. "Over timeand I don't think that longour distribution will continue to grow and expand."
Meanwhile, the jury is still out on whether Chinese viewers will actually embrace the reality shows the company is trying to hawk. So far, the critical reception has been less than glowing. Rocky Liang, entertainment critic for New Weekly magazine in Guangzhou, offers halfhearted applause: "Regardless of whether it's good or bad, it's still nice to watch locally made content." As for that TV Court verdict on the donkey, the judged ordered the creature out of the apartment. As News Corp. may eventually discover, China can be a ruthlessly inhospitable place to make your home.