The Minister of Information & Broadcasting, Ravi Shankar Prasad, announced the guidelines for uplinking of news and current affairs TV channel from India at a press conference, in New Delhi today. Reacting to that STAR has issued a statement where Ravina Raj Kohli, president STAR News, has been quoted saying, "We welcome the guidelines and will comply with them. STAR News will undergo a seamless transition to a 24-hours Hindi news service from March 31, 2003, when the contract with our current supplier comes to an end."

STAR, a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation, is Asia###SQ###s leading multi-platform content and service provider. STAR###SQ###s 40 distributed services in eight languages reach more than 300 million viewers across 53 Asian countries. STAR television channels include STAR Chinese Channel, Xing Kong Wei Shi, Phoenix Chinese Channel, STAR Plus, STAR World, CHannel [V], ESPN, STAR Sports, STAR Movies, STAR Gold, Phoenix Movies Channel, VIVA Cinema, STAR News, Phoenix InfoNews Channel, in addition to distributed channels National Geographic Channel, Adventure One, Vijay, Fox News and Sky News. STAR has interests in cable systems in India and Taiwan. It also powers the launch of Total TV in Taiwan, Asia###SQ###s first interactive digital cable TV services, and Radio City, India###SQ###s leading commercial FM radio network.