Empire building

With his glasses and boyish smile, Wang Changtian can appear unassuming and modest. But looks can be deceptive. Behind Wang's affable appearance hides bold ambitions.

As the founder and president of Enlight Media, China's largest privately owned television production firm, Wang's dream is to create a Chinese media empire that rivals Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

If everything goes well, Wang says his company can, within the next decade, reach the scale of foreign counterparts, such as Viacom, Disney and Time Warner.

"In the next 10 years, many world-class Chinese media and entertainment giants will emerge, befitting the country's increasing importance in the world economy, just like the rise of Bank of China and China Mobile in recent years," Wang says.

"Our goal is to make that happen as soon as possible and turn ourselves into one of the largest entertainment and media companies in the world."

Established in 1998, Enlight Media began as a small company producing TV entertainment programs, a field that did not have a serious competitor at that time.

With Wang's close attention to program quality, Enlight Media soon gained a strong following and has since expanded into other entertainment categories, including film and music production and entertainment event coordination. The company even acts as a talent agent for performing artists.

"If you see the rise of a media empire such as News Corp or Viacom, you will see a business model that combines content production and running a media channel," Wang says. "What I want to do is to copy that business model in China and gain a scale advantage through making a serious acquisition in the country."

Channel resources

Different from other entertainment and media giants, which usually have their own newspapers and channels, private companies are not allowed to purchase TV stations in China. But program production companies are permitted to sell their programs to State-owned TV stations and can also be involved in the programs' advertising.

The policy was regarded by many as a formidable barrier to the formation of any potential national private media empire in the country.

Wang says although he cannot own TV stations, he can achieve the same coverage by cooperating with television stations. "If you can't buy a house, you can still rent one," he says. According to China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, China has 1,284 channels operated by different TV stations, including 16 channels run by CCTV (China Central Television), four by educational TV stations, 264 by provincial stations and 891 by local stations.

Such a huge number of channels has resulted in fierce competition between stations and created a great need for high quality programs made by privately owned content providers.

"TV channels and TV stations are not short on resources in China," Wang says. "The challenge for us is how to effectively cooperate with these scattered stations and channels to make a national network."

Merging with Hurray!

Merging with the NASDAQ-listed Chinese company Hurray! Holding Co Ltd was a major step toward building Wang's media empire.

In December last year, Enlight Media announced it would inject all of its assets into Hurray!, the Chinese wireless service provider that has long struggled but remains strong in music production, operating websites and providing wireless services.

The announcement put an end to Wang's years of efforts for an independent IPO, which was due to kick off in the second quarter of this year.

"Merging with Hurray made us a public company six months in advance, which is a huge plus in China where companies are born and die every minute," Wang says. "Hurray!'s advantages in music production and new media are also highly complementary to our existing resources, helping us gain an advantage of scale."

Last year, Enlight Media's revenue was between 300 million to 400 million yuan, nearly 100 times higher than the 3 million yuan it earned in 1999.

Wang says after the merger the new company's revenue could reach $100 million in 2008, about 1 percent of Time Warner's total in 2006.

"Next year, we will launch a series of acquisitions of good Chinese content production firms and advertising companies that have long-term cooperation deals with local TV stations," Wang says.

"Although we may have only 1 percent revenue of our foreign counterparts at the moment, I believe we can narrow that gap at an astonishing speed."

(China Daily 01/05/2008 page7)