Just over one year into the job, parent company NewsCorp decided to restructure Star TV Asia into three business units - Star India, Star Greater China and Fox International Channels (FIC).
The restructure - ostensibly to shift from a regional model based in Hong Kong to one that focused more on the key markets of India and China - was certainly turbulent. And if that wasn’t enough, two months later, FIC went through a restructure of its own, expanding its portfolio of channels in the region and positioning Fox, National Geographic and the English-language channels alongside Star.
For Ellis, though, the end result is that little has changed. He is still based in Hong Kong, he still has a regional position and he still plays an important role at Star TV. What has changed is the scale. On the one hand he is dealing with a much larger portfolio of channels over a wider geographic spread. On the other hand, there has been a severe personnel reduction. The company estimates that up to 200 employees in Hong Kong will be made redundant as a result.
“What you had were two major organisations, Fox International Channel (representing National Geographic Channel and Fox) and Star,” he says. “When you converge two businesses, there is a natural reduction of headcounts between the two businesses, because of the duplication of roles, I didn’t need two times the sales force to do the same job. Effectively, what we did was select the best team from what we had. It was a tough decision but that’s the job that I was asked to do.”
Three months on and Ellis is at ease with the new set-up, which is just one more challenge in what has so far been a 14-year journey in broadcasting. He began his TV career in 1996, joining what he describes as a “small, unknown company” called United Artist Programming, which later became Flex Tech Television, the forerunner of Virgin Media. “I fell into TV by virtue; I was a rubbish accountant. I was studying at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to become a chartered accountant, but did not do well in their tax exams so, after 18 months, I decided that industry was not for me.”
From there, he moved to Eurosport, where he headed up the company’s sales operations for the regional European market, before being headhunted by Star TV in Asia. “They believed I had the skill set to understand these types of markets,” he says. “I have done my best to share my learnings from both domestic and international markets, and work that into my team.”
The latest step on Ellis’ journey has seen him thrust to the centre of a major product launch in the market - Fox One Stop Media (FOSM), which the company describes as an advertising sales house for Asia-Pacific. Officially, Ellis has called it “a network of 10 sales offices in Asia to locally execute multi-market solutions”. But when asked how this actually translates, his explanation is more creative.
“The best analogy trying to visualise FOSM is like to going into a traditional English sweet shop where you’ve got 50 jars of sweets on five shelves. Our job at FOSM is to provide this little paper bag — you take a sweet out of each jar, put it in a highly concentrated marketing solution, you wrap it up and give it to the clients. It is about flexibility, choice and impact.”
Ellis is adamant that FOSM does not replicate the role of media agencies, and thinks of FOSM more as a tool to help agencies work with clients. “A broadcaster is not an agency. The agencies are the media specialist, they know how to do cross multi-media planning, strategy, creative.”
According to Ellis, FOSM will be able to leverage the global strength of the entire Fox network. “We will very aggressively look at where we don’t succeed compared to our competitors on the global scale,” he says. Now what is interesting is that I have FOSM in Asia, I have FOSM in Europe and I have FOSM in Latin America. If we were to talk to a brand, say General Motors, we might be able to deliver pay-TV solutions by market, by continent, and put it into a global package. This is very difficult to do unless you have a global sales network.”
Yet Ellis must also be hoping that FOSM can help inject more life into the overall pay-TV market in Asia. He is disappointed at how little the industry has progressed over the past several years. “Our share of our market in Asia is not really expanding, and that’s a problem of the pay-TV industry. In order to attract business to the pay-TV market and not just FOSM, but all the markets, you need to go out and develop business with different forms of clients that wouldn’t naturally pick the regional or the multi local markets.”
Ellis feels a major challenge will be trying to change the traditional mindsets of some clients. He points out, for example, that many advertisers are targeting the international news networks and think that their job is then done. “You get an awful lot of financial networks and petroleum companies that focus their advertising strategies on the news networks. I am not saying they shouldn’t, I am just saying don’t just presume that the CEO of XYZ company in China only watches news.”
For Ellis, though, this is more of an opportunity than an obstacle. “There are opportunities left,” he explains. “Especially for us, there is business in India, in China, in the Middle East. We have a lot of catch-up work to do with our competitors in those markets, but it also provides real potential to work with businesses, both direct and with the agencies, and to sell our values and positions.”
2008 SVP, advertising and sales, Star Group
2005 Commercial director, Eurosport, UK
2003 Head of business development, Flextech Television (Virgin Media), UK
2001 Commercial communications manager, Flextech Television (Virgin Media), UK
The restructure - ostensibly to shift from a regional model based in Hong Kong to one that focused more on the key markets of India and China - was certainly turbulent. And if that wasn’t enough, two months later, FIC went through a restructure of its own, expanding its portfolio of channels in the region and positioning Fox, National Geographic and the English-language channels alongside Star.
For Ellis, though, the end result is that little has changed. He is still based in Hong Kong, he still has a regional position and he still plays an important role at Star TV. What has changed is the scale. On the one hand he is dealing with a much larger portfolio of channels over a wider geographic spread. On the other hand, there has been a severe personnel reduction. The company estimates that up to 200 employees in Hong Kong will be made redundant as a result.
“What you had were two major organisations, Fox International Channel (representing National Geographic Channel and Fox) and Star,” he says. “When you converge two businesses, there is a natural reduction of headcounts between the two businesses, because of the duplication of roles, I didn’t need two times the sales force to do the same job. Effectively, what we did was select the best team from what we had. It was a tough decision but that’s the job that I was asked to do.”
Three months on and Ellis is at ease with the new set-up, which is just one more challenge in what has so far been a 14-year journey in broadcasting. He began his TV career in 1996, joining what he describes as a “small, unknown company” called United Artist Programming, which later became Flex Tech Television, the forerunner of Virgin Media. “I fell into TV by virtue; I was a rubbish accountant. I was studying at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to become a chartered accountant, but did not do well in their tax exams so, after 18 months, I decided that industry was not for me.”
From there, he moved to Eurosport, where he headed up the company’s sales operations for the regional European market, before being headhunted by Star TV in Asia. “They believed I had the skill set to understand these types of markets,” he says. “I have done my best to share my learnings from both domestic and international markets, and work that into my team.”
The latest step on Ellis’ journey has seen him thrust to the centre of a major product launch in the market - Fox One Stop Media (FOSM), which the company describes as an advertising sales house for Asia-Pacific. Officially, Ellis has called it “a network of 10 sales offices in Asia to locally execute multi-market solutions”. But when asked how this actually translates, his explanation is more creative.
“The best analogy trying to visualise FOSM is like to going into a traditional English sweet shop where you’ve got 50 jars of sweets on five shelves. Our job at FOSM is to provide this little paper bag — you take a sweet out of each jar, put it in a highly concentrated marketing solution, you wrap it up and give it to the clients. It is about flexibility, choice and impact.”
Ellis is adamant that FOSM does not replicate the role of media agencies, and thinks of FOSM more as a tool to help agencies work with clients. “A broadcaster is not an agency. The agencies are the media specialist, they know how to do cross multi-media planning, strategy, creative.”
According to Ellis, FOSM will be able to leverage the global strength of the entire Fox network. “We will very aggressively look at where we don’t succeed compared to our competitors on the global scale,” he says. Now what is interesting is that I have FOSM in Asia, I have FOSM in Europe and I have FOSM in Latin America. If we were to talk to a brand, say General Motors, we might be able to deliver pay-TV solutions by market, by continent, and put it into a global package. This is very difficult to do unless you have a global sales network.”
Yet Ellis must also be hoping that FOSM can help inject more life into the overall pay-TV market in Asia. He is disappointed at how little the industry has progressed over the past several years. “Our share of our market in Asia is not really expanding, and that’s a problem of the pay-TV industry. In order to attract business to the pay-TV market and not just FOSM, but all the markets, you need to go out and develop business with different forms of clients that wouldn’t naturally pick the regional or the multi local markets.”
Ellis feels a major challenge will be trying to change the traditional mindsets of some clients. He points out, for example, that many advertisers are targeting the international news networks and think that their job is then done. “You get an awful lot of financial networks and petroleum companies that focus their advertising strategies on the news networks. I am not saying they shouldn’t, I am just saying don’t just presume that the CEO of XYZ company in China only watches news.”
For Ellis, though, this is more of an opportunity than an obstacle. “There are opportunities left,” he explains. “Especially for us, there is business in India, in China, in the Middle East. We have a lot of catch-up work to do with our competitors in those markets, but it also provides real potential to work with businesses, both direct and with the agencies, and to sell our values and positions.”
Jonathan Ellis' CV
2009 SVP, revenue and partnerships, Fox One Stop Media (FOSM), Asia-Pacific2008 SVP, advertising and sales, Star Group
2005 Commercial director, Eurosport, UK
2003 Head of business development, Flextech Television (Virgin Media), UK
2001 Commercial communications manager, Flextech Television (Virgin Media), UK
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