Case Study on Astro Malaysia Holdings

KMC3264 / BMC3064 – Managing Media & Business / Media Management

Written and Oral Assiment – Case Study on  Astro Malaysia Holdings

1.0 Introduction

Founded in  1996, Astro is one of the most successful direct broadcast satellite in Malaysia.  Providing  movies, songs, dramas in Malaysia and few of the countries in SEA. The founder,  Tan Sri Ananda Krishnan was granted the license in 1995 to operate MEASAT and launched ASTRO on the 1st June 1996. 4 Main channels were released which is Saluran 20 for the English channel. Saluran 1 for the Malay language, Saluran 60 for the Cantonese. Saluran 2 for the Tamil channel.

2.0 Problem / Situation on Hand

The first problem frequently faced by users is the bad signal issues which is frequently common during the raining weather. This problem was common from 1997 and was complained by users from time to time again such as when it the rain starts to drizzles the programs will be interrupted or it will start to became static interruption, few second you able to watch the next second the screen will go blank so you won’t be able to watch it smoothly.

As every successful media companies there is bound to be rivals. Astro is no exception. With the introduction of NETFLIX and IFLIX who grew more popular in late 2014. NETFLIX AND IFLIX are companies that provide streaming media and VOD NETFLIX is based in USA and IFLIX based on Malaysia. As mentioned during the rival of NETFLIX and IFLIX, Astro company is been pressured due to its competitors while they are facing challenges in their profits as well as more people are focusing on NETFLIX, a similar set up like NETFLIX has entered in the market which is known as IFLIX a Malaysian base company. They also are collaborated with TELEKOM Malaysia, where those who are using UNIFI and Streamyx will have one year free subscription. Furthermore, both are available in over  190 countries. More and more Astro users are jumping on the bandwagon. Feeling threatened, Astro had to do something to promote and save their services.

In addition, Astro Holdings Berhad has also been facing numerous complaints from their customers saying that that the shows and movies are repetitive and new episodes of series are taking too long to be aired by the stations. Furthermore, Astro has also been facing difficulties in obtaining newer episodes of the channels Discovery, Animal Planet, National Geographic and many more. This further puts the organisation in a tight situation and has caused several limitations in providing diverse and updated channels for their customers. This situation has placed Astro in a dire state as customers are losing interest and slowly gaining weariness towards the repetitive shows and programmes. An article from MalaysiaKini (2010) has posted a customer’s dissatisfaction towards this service flaw where it is said that movies aired on one channel are seem to be repeated on another channel just after several hours from being aired. This flaw in Astro’s service has also been felt by numerous other customers in which, will bring a bad impression and will result to high amount of loss for the organisation.

3.0 Solutions

Therefore, Astro came up with Astro Beyond to improve on their issues such as interruption when it rains and also improvements on resolutions to HD channels and yes, when it starts to rain we still able to watch Astro but when the rain starts to get heavy the problem still persist and customers started to complaint on the interruptions. Due to the complaints and issues, on 5th September 2012 Astro came up a solution to collaborate with Maxis in order to resolve interruptions during rain and also to bring in more customers to use Astro in a cheaper package from there problems did not persist when it rains.

Astro was quick in their implementation of Astro NJOI which is a one time payment without any monthly instalments or any sort of payment. Just only RM285 and it is yours to be watched. And to fight off the rivals, they released Astro On The Go which users are able to stream using a mobile device or just plain internet streaming online.  Astro on demand is made which enables customers to catch latest movie which has been release on the cinema for 3 months  and has more channels than regular Astro channels. Though users has to pay slightly more for the upgrade. Tons of new channels were added to upgrade too.