Home and lifestyle channel HGTV, a high-rating pay-TV offering in the US, is set to make its international debut outside North America, landing on StarHub in Singapore next month ahead of a planned regional rollout.

It’s a key step to further the ambitions of the channel’s owner, lifestyle TV specialist Scripps Networks Interactive, which wants to carve out leadership in Asia across three categories: food, home and travel.

HGTV represents the final piece of the Asia jigsaw for Scripps, which already runs Asian Food Channel, Food Network and Travel Channel in this part of the world, in addition to a longer established licensing business.

Scripps, a venerable media brand that began life as a newspaper publisher 135 years ago, is a relative newcomer to pay-TV. It launched its first pay-TV channel, HGTV in the US, 20 years ago. Scripps Networks Interactive was spun off as a separate pay-TV entity in 2008.

An ongoing push to build up a still small international channels business began in earnest a year later, with the launch of Food Network in the UK in 2009.

An Asian springboard

As of today, the company’s channel footprint in Asia is anchored around Asian Food Channel, a well-distributed homegrown offering that Scripps acquired last year.

Future growth, especially for Scripps’ imported channel brands, hinges on complementing selected content from the US library with incremental investments in local production, posing a programming and marketing challenge to company executives.

“The shows that tend to be the leading shows either are the big international hits that work everywhere, and then often with Asian Food Channel, it’s the local production that has the local talent that also performs at that level,” muses international president Jim Samples.

“But that talent might not perform as well in different Asian markets,” he adds, speaking to Media Business Asia on the sidelines of the Casbaa conference in Hong Kong.

In Asia, where Scripps is led by APAC MD Derek Chang, US lifestyle content has better traction in some markets, notably Malaysia and Singapore, than others, complicating the rollout of channels that rely heavily on programming from the US. Nonetheless, Samples believes Scripps is well placed to achieve its goals.

The company is increasingly focused on entertainment-oriented lifestyle shows that have wider appeal, he notes.

This approach helped boost ratings for Food Network and HGTV in the US; Scripps is now applying the same formula to Travel Channel, which it acquired domestically in 2009, while concluding a separate deal for Travel Channel International in 2012.

Besides, more instructional how-to programming, a mainstay of lifestyle media, is better suited to on-demand platforms in a multiplatform world, Samples argues. Scripps still includes that element in its productions, but increasingly as short-form content designed to be consumed online.

Last year, Scripps unveiled its own direct-to-consumer OTT offering, uLive, a free ad-supported platform that mixes channel clips with custom-made web series.

At the same time, the company announced in September that it is bringing international program sales back in-house, making it easier for Scripps to leverage its own content to drive its portfolio of overseas channels.

“The licensing business has grown despite the fact we’re in the channel business,” Samples says. “We’ve pulled back some content that we really need as the core of our channels, but we are producing almost 2,500 hours of programming a year, which is more than enough to feed our channels as well as program sales.”

A premium on formats

At the same time, Samples, who oversees both channels and program sales, is limiting the sale of format rights from Scripps' library, retaining these to moderate risk when making local shows.

The company premiered a local version of US format Best Thing I Ever Ate on Food Network this year, and plans to follow up with an Asian edition of Food Wars in 2015.

Scripps is also producing localized short-form programming for the Asia launch of HGTV based on its Extreme Homes franchise, followed by an original series based on an unnamed format next year.

“As soon as you start investing lots in local programming and localization, the business model can turn upside down,” Samples said during his on-stage session at Casbaa.

“Our focus will be on producing as much content as we can, but at low cost, looking for models of production that are scalable,” he added.

“It’s very important that we use tried and true formats, that we find places to produce where we can keep our production costs low. And when we can, we still use the international programming as the core and backbone of our networks.”

Program sales can help evaluate the local appeal of particular shows, but Samples stresses that the real test, and ultimate goal, is building well-known channels that people want to consume. That journey has just begun.

“We don’t have an expectation,” he said. “We are very realistic about how long it takes to build those kinds of powerful brands. But the company has the sticking power and commitment to do what it takes to make that happen.”