Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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It’s one of those truisms in journalism… if the headline ends in a question mark, the answer is so obviously “NO!” that it can make your brain hurt. In this case, the question is “Are Media Companies Charging Streaming Services Enough?” Of course, in the discussion about whether to licence content to rivals, and if so, how much to charge, most answers are a bit more nuanced than simple declaratives, as James Murdoch pointed out at a Goldman Sachs conference this week. And anyway, not all decisions have to be final, do they? |
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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On a sort of related note, the BBC is going OTT in the USA (say that three times fast). The service will launch next year to carry programmes currently not available in the US, and will put the Beeb in direct competition with Netflix, among others. |
Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Remember we mentioned that Apple’s iOS 9 update was going to support ad-blocking? Well, the software update came out this week, and ad-blocking is definitely a thing. The fact that the update also features an un-removable Apple News app is, of course, no coincidence. But apart from potentially sounding the death knell for some ad-supported web publishers (who are trying to fight back, btw), there’s a great piece on The Verge that explains that what we’re really talking about is money and power in Silicon Valley. |
Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
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ZenithOptimedia is forecasting that global adspend will grow 4 percent to reach $554 billion in 2015, with mature markets set to lead the growth for the first time in nine years. Television is still, by some distance, the dominant advertising medium, attracting 39 percent of spend in 2014. ZenithOptimedia forecasts television adspend to grow by an average of 2 percent a year through to 2017. |
Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
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Ahead of CASBAA’s conference on Promoting Online Safety & Protecting Brand Integrity, the growing problem of online ad misplacement was recently discussed at the Australian IAB’s leadership summit in Sydney. Speakers claimed ad fraud costs the industry around $100 million a year straight out of marketers’ budgets. Over the last year, the US IAB has been focusing on online traffic fraud as well as placement of ads on illegal (including pirate) websites. They’re working to clean up the supply chain – something for the online industry in Asia to think about. These issues will be discussed at CASBAA’s conference Making Online Advertising Click which will be held on Monday 26th October during the CASBAA Convention week. |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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Far too many governments are content to sit complacent and unmoving in the face of the tidal waves of changes sweeping the communications industry. Not Down Under, where both the Oz and NZ governments have regulatory reform initiatives underway. New Zealand has just issued a thoughtful “road map” to guide discussion of work extending across several ministries, which will explicitly examine areas where a “Tilted Playing Field” is developing. (Things like the need for content classification, applicability of GST to cross-border content delivery, regulatory inequities in advertising, etc.) The paper recognizes that existing broadcasting regulation was designed for another age, and “it is timely to review whether and how content should be regulated.” Bring on that review… |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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Meanwhile, in Australia: a couple of months ago, the Minister of Communications announced he wanted a public review of regulatory agency ACMA, “to ensure it remains fit-for-purpose for both the contemporary and future communications environment.” (It’s rare for any government to ask questions whose answer might be “sunset” for regulators or regulations…) Well, the Minister is now the Prime Minister, and some people are saying that means in addition to changes inside the government, reform of media ownership rules is imminent. But others (including the Labor Opposition) are grumbling “not so fast, boys and girls…” The Labor dude warned Turnbull that he was standing “in the middle of a minefield” on media ownership. |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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Anyway, back to the ACMA review: the submissions are in, and the telcos sought a major paring back (or elimination) of the regulator. Interestingly, about the most detailed submission was from ACMA itself, analyzing how well it has met its KPIs. Our cousins at ASTRA, the pay-TV association in Sydney, cited “the potential for legacy regulation to inhibit innovation and investment… and to apply inconsistently to existing operators and new services.” So they want to move the future communications regulator toward “a preference for non-regulatory or co-regulatory approaches.” Yay!!! The prize for best line of the week goes to ASTRA CEO Andrew Maiden who told their annual conference that the rules today look like they were “drafted on a Commodore 64 computer.” (Here, this will save all you Millennials from having to Google that…) |
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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Here’s an interesting commentary on digitization in India. The authors are pretty pessimistic, saying that while India tried to leapfrog to digitisation in a much shorter time than big developed countries, “the realisation (of the goals) became more distant as the deadlines approached.” And they analyze all the missteps being made. |
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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Many good stories this week. For those of you that have never seen the video “Everything is a Remix” the remastered version is on Vimeo. It’s a very interesting look at music, film, tech from the perspective of plagiarism and copyright laws. Beware, your current view could be altered. Myspace is back in vogue with its pivot to music AND video, “making it a bigger property than Snapchat and Vice”. With the new Apple TV just announced, Digital Ian takes a look at The Impact of Apple TV Universal Search on Content Apps. This could have implications for any media company distributing video through an Apple TV app. |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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The controversy about forced pan-European copyright licensing continues to rage. (The EU Commission is pushing to ban geo-blocking and break down licensing on a national basis, as they believe Europe should have a single market.) Now the English Premier League has weighed in, saying the Commission was “reckless” in trying to “transform effective business models which are working for thousands for a tiny minority at the margins.” The Commission is ignoring the evidence of the real world, said the head of the EPL. At the same time, the MPAA’s Europe chief, Stan McCoy, took on the ‘Luddite Critique’ of the audiovisual sector, for our alleged failure to embrace technological change. The Commission is moving toward a system that would benefit only big players with the scale to serve all of Europe, he said, but this risked disrupting the developing online ecosystem that already counts about 3,000 audiovisual services across the continent. “What (the Commission) fails to grasp is the critical role of contractual freedom…” he said. |
Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Hard to believe it’s been 67 years, but that’s the number: the 67th annual Emmy Awards are being held this Sunday in the US. Of course, in this age of “Peak TV”, there are far too many nominees to keep track of, let alone shows to have watched. But in the run-up to the awards ceremony, there are loads of prediction pieces out there, many with variations on the same headline — and too many of those, too. And this year, the TV Academy has tweaked things (not for the first time, btw), opening up voting for “Best Comedy” and “Best Drama” to all 20,000 of its members, so there could be some surprises. Tune in Monday morning! |
