Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Apr 1st. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
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Christopher SlaughterCEO |
The Oculus Rift was finally released this week. Rather than reading through a bunch of reviews, The Guardian provides core snippets from all the major Tech journals. In the VR TV space, Hulu has hopped on board with an app for Samsung Gear and is expected to launch a Rift app soon. If you still aren’t convinced of the uses of VR, the WSJ’s piece, Why You Should Try That Crazy Virtual Reality Headset, may change your mind. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
Looks like China’s police are finally getting serious in taking action against some of the “black box” streaming media piracy syndicates. They say they’ve prosecuted 422 people and confiscated over 830,000 boxes in the last six months. This is a very welcome development, but it seems to be still limited to syndicates selling their boxes inside China. The export pirates haven’t been touched yet. Meanwhile in the UK, the police have continued their work in breaking up box syndicates. The Torrentfreak website comments “the advent of cheap Android-based equipment has brought the streaming of movies, TV shows, sports and other content into the living rooms of countless non-tech savvy individuals….plug-and-play piracy is now a reality and rights holders everywhere are more than tired of it.” Got that right. |
Mark LayVice President, Singapore |
Wired has a comprehensive article on Netflix’s Grand, Daring, Maybe Crazy Plan to Conquer the World. This could just be the start for Netflix. I may be wrong, but those who think that Netflix is going to be happy with only selling TV shows and movies probably thought that Amazon was going to be happy just selling books. |
Kevin JenningsVice President, Programme |
Last year they said that, bizarrely, Australia would be taking part in Eurovision. This year the European Broadcasting Union has announced it has signed an exclusive option with Australia’s SBS to establish an Asian version of the Eurovision Song Contest. SBS and production partners Blink TV are exploring the opportunity to establish the Eurovision Song Contest concept in the Asia Pacific region. Capitalising on the success, production values and scale of the Eurovision Song Contest, Eurovision Asia would encompass Asia Pacific nations, bringing together up to 20 countries to compete in one live annual Grand Final. The inaugural event is planned to be hosted in Australia in 2017 with broadcast rights being licensed on a global basis. If you’re still unsure what Eurovision is all about check out a few of the previous contestants including a relatively unknown Celine Dion singing for Switzerland, the winning Herrys Diggi loo Diggy lay, and of course ABBA. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
The Washington Post takes an interesting look at children’s programming online. Netflix is trying to appeal to kids, in an effort to be a go-to service for the whole family, but children’s advocates are worried, noting that (surprise surprise) there aren’t any rules in the online environment. And some find Netflix’s “family-friendly” series to be not friendly enough. One interesting factoid is buried near the end of the Post article: Netflix is finding that kids are consistent around the world; 7 of the 10 most-watched kids shows are consistently top-rated in all countries (well, at least all the ones Netflix was serving when that data was compiled.) Kids will be kids, I guess. |
Kevin JenningsVice President, Programme |
The latest global viewing figures are in for February online viewing – and while this is not an exhaustive list it’s interesting to see the Indian homegrown music label T-Series made it to the top 10 YouTube channels worldwide with 455.4 million views across the month. The number one position was retained by Justin Bieber, with his videos watched 721.6m times in February. Bieber now has more than 20 million subscribers to his channel, and is about to reach 10 bn lifetime views. The Wrestling body WWE had the third-biggest channel in February and The Ellen Show also appeared in the top 10. Looking specifically at the US online video content property video viewing at YouTube.com, racked up 182.2 million unique viewers. Facebook followed with 81.1 million viewers, then Yahoo Sites with 58.2 million, BroadbandTV with 45.3 million and VEVO with 44.2 million. |
Christopher SlaughterCEO |
Sad news from Al Jazeera as the broadcaster announced it is cutting 500 jobs with most of the layoffs being at the company’s Doha headquarters. . CEO Al Anstey said the business model was “simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges“. In a memo, delivered to staff in both English and Arabic, the company pointed to a changing media landscape as a reason for the cuts. Al Jazeera launched in 1996 and now includes 70 bureaux worldwide. The latest cuts come after Al Jazeera announced the closure of its US offshoot earlier in the year. With Al Jazeera America shutting down in April, the AJAM online staff have launched bestofajam.com, a website featuring the profiles of more than 50 soon-to-be-out-of-work digital journalists as they start their job hunt. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
Censorship rules applied by the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), continue to attract a lot of controversy. KPI has taken to regularly trumpeting the number of “violations” of its broadcasting codes that it finds by the privately-owned terrestrial broadcasting networks. Others are retorting that a review of the networks’ performance should be based on a holistic view of their activities and not just on KPI’s finger-wagging. And a drafter of the Broadcasting Law wrote that KPI’s approach violates the Press Law, which prohibits it from constraining activities of the press. Meanwhile, rights groups see KPI’s activities as part of a pattern of government measures having a chilling effect on freedom of expression. |
Anjan MitraExecutive Director, India |
When petroleum to retail to telecoms to media behemoth Reliance Industries’ chairman Mukesh Ambani made an appearance at this week’s Frames media conference in Mumbai after 12 years, many people were stumped. What’s the big announcement was the question bandied around. Dwelling on Reliance JIO’s 4g services, Ambani said the service would improve mobile and Internet coverage from the current 15-20 per cent (of the Indian population to 70 per cent on day one. Cost? Wait and see, he smiled. But now a media report reveals the JIO sim cards could be made available at a cost of Rs 200/USD 3 approximately for 75GB of 4G data, 4,500 minutes of call time and other freebies. Do we see competition wringing its head already even before the JIO service is launched? |
Kevin JenningsVice President, Programme |
Northern Sky Research (NSR) have said that they estimate that around 800 ultra HD channels will be transmitted via satellite over the next ten years. In a recently released report, NSR found that while commercial Ultra HD channels in East Asia have been available for over a year, the new format expands its geographic reach on linear TV platforms. NSR predicts that by 2017 almost all regions worldwide will have Ultra HD channels available, and even developing regions see content by the end of the decade. The plunging price of 4K TV sets is accelerating demand in the new format, setting 4K TV penetration rates to rise faster than the initial introduction of HDTVs. |
Jane BuckthoughtAdvertising Consultant |
A recent report found that the more engaged viewer recall more ads. It concluded that “Not all TV audiences are created equal: we’ve long believed that viewers respond differently to commercials depending on how they feel about what they’re watching,” |
Mark LayVice President, Singapore |
Variety’s cover-story: Inside Endemol Shine’s Ambitious Plan to Conquer Global TV sheds light on this behemoth of a production-distribution outfit. “The great uniqueness of this company is you could never ever build this from scratch now”, says CEO Sophie Turner Laing. The article continues, “It has the widest global reach of any pure-play production-distribution outfit. Last year, the company was responsible for the production of some 733 TV series, a volume dwarfing that of the international TV production operations of most U.S. majors. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
Notable quotes from this week’s news:
“Subscribers have to spend money to watch TV and they have the right to demand high-quality programs. Meanwhile, foreign TV channels are obviously better than Vietnamese ones.” — a TV subscriber in Hanoi, miffed that government content quotas may reduce the foreign programming on Vietnam pay-TV platforms. “For most people, the idea that we need new federal regulations to give us more choice in TV is ridiculous on its face. From Netflix to Roku boxes to Apple TV, we have more ways to find and watch TV than ever…” — US commentator, trashing the FCC’s “Allvid” efforts to “open up the set-top box” “After new regulations on what can be shown on broadcast and online TV dramas in China came into force recently, it is not clear that much more than the official daily activities of Party leaders is left to watch.” – An exec at McKinsey China, commenting on the latest Chinese censorship squeeze. “We routinely seek to identify and disrupt those intent on making quick cash from piracy and will use every enforcement opportunity to bring them to justice,” – the head of the UK Police IP Crimes Unit, commenting on the break-up of a piracy syndicate that was distributing streaming media “black boxes” allowing access to pay-TV programming. |
Jane BuckthoughtAdvertising Consultant |
A popular discussion, how is viewing changing. In the US, Nielsen see it as a life-stage feature more than an age range. |