Profile: Astro Entertainment head Zainir Aminullah

From a marketing role within oil and gas industry to head of a major pay-TV channel's content arm, the past 12 years have been an interesting ride for Zainir Aminullah. "I'm an engineer by training and started my career at Shell Malaysia," he says. "Oil and gas compared to media - completely different religions right?"

Actually, Aminullah claims the transition wasn't too difficult due to his approach to work. "There is a product and a customer. The moment you understand what makes it work between the two, then I think any product is the same to you."

The 42-year-old says what interested him was that PayTV was the pioneering effort. When he joined Astro in 1996, there was no pay-TV in Malaysia, no satellite TV, and Astro was a new brand at that time. "We were first in a lot of ways, that was too tempting to resist," he says.

As executive director of Astro Entertainment, the media veteran now heads up the pay-TV group's content arm.

"Astro Entertainment wasn't created until 2007. Our group had all the right structure, management and expertise, but content remained a secondary concern," says Aminullah explaining why Astro Entertainment was set up.

The broadcaster's content creation currently has an in-house production unit that develops anything from entertainment shows to music-related programmes to weekly magazine shows. There is also a drama production unit, a news operation and a sports arm.

Aminullah says that a big part of Astro Entertainment's strength lies in its channel packaging for various formats and genres and he believes this is what sets Astro apart.

Its multitude of channels, devised for different audiences, is a big advantage to the more generic fare that is found on other free-to-air platforms. There are programmes for higher income and more urban demographics, as well as dedicated channels for children, comedies and movies .

Children's channel Astro Ceria is the market leader, more popular even than its international competitors. Aminullah cites investment in local kids' content, which is rare in Malaysia, as one of the prime reasons for its dominance. "Because of the breadth of our subscriber base, we're able to find sizable segments for all our channels," says Aminullah. "We also develop specific products or specialised offerings that cater to different needs."

According to MediaVest Malaysia MD, Wong Pi Yee, Astro channels and programming have some 11.9 per cent overall share in the country and a 16.4 share among the Malay population. She believes Astro Entertainment has done well to tap into global trends for reality TV and talk shows, to create localised, good quality programmes for the local audience. However, the gap is in the hit rate of its programmes, which according to Wong is "ad hoc and not sustainable." Compared with free-to-air TV where overall and Malay audience share can hit 27.5 and 45 per cent respectively, there are areas for Astro to work on.

"The biggest challenge for Astro Entertainment is how they can produce original content that is so appealing to the mass Malay audience that they are willing to pay for it," Wong says. "Currently, free-to-air Malay content seems to be able to satisfy their appetite and the channels are raising the bar constantly."

Addressing this is where Aminullah's marketing background will come in useful, showing again how he benefits from his years at Shell. Beyond content creation and channel packaging, he says he is engaged in "exploitation opportunities", which, put simply, means how to market and package the programmes once the production stage is over. "We need to then shout about it, promote, market and publicise the programmes," he says. "We explore how we're able to re-package this content to different audiences in different ways. For example, we could offer it to mobile subscribers; I could exploit the programme's songs, or I could go into digital media."

As well as the challenge from free-to-air TV, Aminullah also identifies the need to be able to produce programmes for a more demanding and sophisticated audience.

"I need to keep giving my audience what they like - that's our bread and butter. But I also need to stay ahead of them, so that they will see something different," he elaborates, "When you're dealing with TV shows, out of 10 ideas, you hope that one or two work. If those work, you want to have continuous seasons or spin-offs."

Aminullah cites an example of how a year ago, his organisation pulled together a teen-musical drama, not unlike Glee. "We'd enveloped our viewers in a 360 degree approach. There was viral marketing preceding the launch of the show. We launched the soundtrack on the radio. We had a mobile presence with downloads, so we immersed the viewer in the whole brand experience, not just in watching the TV show."

Aminullah also oversees distribution and syndication for Astro Entertainment, and points to the opportunities in overseas markets. Astro's channels and programmes can be seen in Singapore on mio TV and there is a channel in Vietnam.

"There is an opportunity to not so much replicate what we have been able to do in Malaysia, but to offer value in respective markets," says Aminullah. "We understand channels and content, we have got very good consumer insights and processes, so the opportunity is there to ask what we can do for you in your market?"

This article was originally published in the 1 July 2010 issue of Media.