Talpa forms China joint venture

John de Mol’s Talpa Media has set up a joint venture with News Corp-backed Chinese production company Puji Star Media to target the local television business.

The new company, Talpa China Star, will make Chinese versions of formats from the Talpa catalogue, primarily for the Greater China market. Local versions of Talpa’s I Love My Country, Sing It and The Voice have previously aired in the territory.

Puji Star Media is itself a Shanghai-based joint venture between News Corp-backed Star China Media and the investment firm Puji Capital. It launched in July to develop international TV content for Chinese audiences.

Talpa and Star China already have a pre-existing alliance, having together produced The Voice for Zhejiang Television in China earlier this year. The first season was the top variety show in the country and reached over 500 million viewers, according to Talpa.

Puji Star Media said that Talpa’s “creativity and format structures” were “very suitable” for the Chinese market, while Talpa Holding CEO Pim Schmitz said it was “an important step” for the company in China.

“We have done business in the Chinese TV market for several years now, but on a much smaller scale. Our joint venture with such an important party as Puji Star Media enables us to optimally adapt and exploit our original format ideas in the very fast-growing Chinese media market,” Schmitz added.