 |
Christopher Slaughter
CEO
|
|
| What happens when you’re running a website that illegally distributes more than US$1 billion worth of pirated material, and you’re also using an Apple email account and running a Facebook fan page? You get arrested in Poland. Meanwhile, seven domains and a bank account belonging to Kickass Torrents have also been seized by US authorities, who say the site was earning somewhere between 12 and 23 million dollars in ad revenues annually. Meanwhile, in case you needed further proof of the whack-a-mole nature of online piracy, Kim Dotcom has announced a relaunch of Megaupload. |
 |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
|
|
| Indonesia’s House of Representatives has selected nine new Commissioners for regulatory body KPI. The nine were selected after scrutiny to determine they were “fit and proper”, a process which partly seemed focused on ensuring they agreed with the barring of any LGBT presence on TV. In recent months, the KPI has proven to be quite activist when it comes to censorship, sometimes requiring terrestrial channels to go to seemingly ridiculous extremes to blur offending bits. Meanwhile, in what is probably unrelated news, the House is considering banning Pokémon Go from being played on its premises. |
 |
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
|
|
| What happens when a company’s EPS goes up by 50%, and comes in 3x more than analysts expect, naturally it drops by 15%. Well that’s what happened to Netflix earlier this week when it delivered far fewer than expected subscriber numbers They ONLY added 1.7 million subscribers in Q2. What really disappointed was that a paltry 160k subs were added in the U.S., which is far below the 900k the company added during the same quarter a year ago. Netflix blames reporting about it’s expected plan to “ungrandfather longer tenured members.” Translation: “price hike”. Though it’s hard to believe so many people canceling over $1 more per month. Market saturation, possibly. |
 |
Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
|
|
| The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) in South Korea has put the brakes on a merger between the two giants in the local telecommunications and broadcasting sectors SK Telecom and CJ HelloVision. Korea’s antitrust watchdog said it rejected SK Telecom’s bid to buy the country’s leading cable TV operator, raising concerns that the merger would limit competition in the pay broadcasting and telecom markets. SK Telecom has said it seeks to become an all-around media platform operator both in the mobile and Internet-based IPTV sectors, while CJ HelloVision has been focusing more on the entertainment and TV production business. Both SKT and CJH said they will accept the decision. |
|
Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
|
|
| Staying in South Korea the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety has announced that it intends to ban TV commercials promoting highly caffeinated coffee milk drinks with effect from November. The ruling applies to both terrestrial and cable broadcasters who will be banned from airing ads for more than 100 products and brands. The 500-milliter drinks in question contain the equivalent caffeine to almost four cans of Red Bull. As we say in the CASBAA office “Drink Coffee – do stupid things faster”. |
|
Christopher Slaughter
CEO
|
|
| If you can’t take geeks, stay the hell away from San Diego this weekend: ComicCon 2016 has begun. The event, “…where Hollywood meets geek culture in the loudest, craziest way possible…,” has been running for 46 years now, and yes, cosplay has pretty much always been a feature. This year, film studios have reduced their presence, only to be replaced by broadcasters— it seems like there’s something TV-ish happening every half-hour. But the best news of all? You don’t have to go anywhere near the madness if you don’t want to, since it’s being streamed online. |
 |
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
|
|
The new MIB minister Venkaiah Naidu promised a section of the film industry of more effective piracy control tools, but government needs to do more than just shifting copyrights and IPR issues from one ministry to another. In recent times, its either the media industry or courts who have been cracking the whip more to curb loss of revenue all round even as commentators ask when will Indian Copyright Act favour artistes and not institutionalised bodies.
|
 |
Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
|
|
| News from India’s TV measurement body BARC, which has announced new genre classification criteria for broadcasters. Under the new system, television channels must have more than 60% of the content from the genre in which they want to be categorised. Channels that do not fall under any specified genre will be labeled as GECs. As BARC reports weekly top channel lists grouped by genre, the classification is a move to counter channels broadcasting significant amounts of mixed programming to engage and retain their audiences while still describing themselves under a specific genre/theme. More information on the move from BARC can be found here. |
|
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
|
|
The Odd Couple, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley and Mork & Mindy were all shows of my youth. It was classic TV that had Garry Marshall behind them all. Unfortunately Garry passed away this week. Lots of tributes (pick your star): Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, James Cordon, Anne Hathaway, Richard Gere, and Kate Hudson each provide their memories. Oh yes, then there was the movie Pretty Woman directed by Marshall, which my wife saw four times….on one flight.
|
|
Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
|
|
Consumers around the world will this year spend 23% more time viewing video on mobile devices than on ‘fixed’ devices, according to a new report from Zenith’s Online Video Forecast. |
