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Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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The Singapore Media Festival is in full swing and CASBAA is delighted to be hosting an associate one day event on Emerging Southeast Asian Markets on Monday 5th December at the Park Royal on Pickering. The event will feature analysis and discussion on the development of multichannel TV in Cambodia. Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam and has a slew of interesting speakers that will offer invaluable insight into these markets. Take a look at the programme –
there’s still time to register as a delegate. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| This is a rather long piece, but it’s important. It talks about an issue we all should think hard about….cyberhacking of broadcasters’ networks. Sony was the first of our members to get slammed by hackers, and after that TV5Monde’s broadcasting network was practically wiped out. Recovery took months. Interestingly, BBC now tells us that the so-called “Cyber Caliphate” behind the TV5Monde assault was in fact Russian in origin! TV5’s chief said recently that the attack was aimed at “destroying the company.” Well, the bottom line is that if your company hasn’t started taking precautions against these risks, you should.
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| US telco giant AT&T has launched its long-anticipated streaming service DirecTV Now, featuring a range of skinny bundles at varying price points, from “Live A Little” ($35 a month for 60 channels) to “Just Right” ($50 for 80), “Go Big” ($60 for 100) and “Gotta Have It!” ($70 for 120). The service kicks off with a special offer of 100 channels for US$35 a month for a “limited time” (which hasn’t yet been defined); all of which is fine, except that AT&T seems certain to be losing money on the deal. Oh, and because AT&T won’t be counting DirecTV Now usage against mobile subcribers’ data plans on its networks (known as “zero-rating”), it might also be in violation of the FCC’s net neutrality rules. Predictably, that aspect of the service is being described by open Internet advocates as a “nightmare scenario” that’s “…finally happening at a scale that matters.” Well, they can rage all they want, but after Trump’s election, it’s not going to matter. Lots of nightmare scenarios are going to happen. |
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| Last night at the Asian TV Awards (or as I fondly referred to it as “date night) it was great to see a number of CASBAA members being recognized for some of their exceptional work. Discovery, BBC, Disney, A+E, Fox, Turner, Astro, StarHub and HBO all took home some hardware. Tonight at the day-two star-studded event more awards will be given out with MTV, Scripps, Disney, A+E, Discovery, HBO, and Astro all in the running. Somehow I didn’t get any tickets to this, so I’ll be enjoying it at home via broadcast for “family night”. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| What’s a government to do? They refuse permission for a service operator to come into their market, and the company just thumbs its nose and says “we’ll sit offshore and serve your customers over the internet with our premium content.” This week’s example concerns the Taiwan government and China-based OTT operator iQiyi. And the Indian government says it is going to collect GST from offshore sales of videos as well as goods. How’s that going to work? I think I’ll start counting these cases; if you hear of any others let me know. The trend of governments trying to cope with offshore content supply, but not really succeeding, is going to be up……
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| UK-based TMT research firm Ovum is slamming Netflix, saying its spending on content is “not sustainable.” The streaming giant spent something like US$5 billion on content in 2016, and is reportedly planning to up that to US$6 billion in 2017; the report notes that Netflix shares currently trade at 300 times earnings, compared to an industry average of 25 times. “The exuberance surrounding Netflix has parallels with the dot-com boom, when tech companies with lots of users ‘eyeballs’ — and no profits — were reaching stratospheric valuations.”
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| Back in September of last year, Neil Hunt, Netflix’s Chief Product Officer had great reasons why people wouldn’t want to download a video onto their phone to watch later. At the time he said, “We’ll see if it’s something lots of people will use….it adds considerable complexity to your life with Amazon Prime – you have to remember that you want to download this thing. One of the things I’ve learned is that every time you offer a choice, you paralyse some people who can’t decide if that’s what they want to do or not.” Netflix now thinks that their users will be able to make that choice as they are now offering a download feature on a selection of their titles. Maybe it’s not so complex after all. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| In piracy news:
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| The Indian broadcasting industry united to ask for “infrastructure” status for investments in broadcasting and media distribution networks. Currently, investments in telecom networks benefit from favorable tax treatment, but investments in cable or DTH do not. Not logical.
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| So remember last week, when we mentioned in passing that prolific video blogger Casey Neistat was quitting his vlog, despite having 5.8 million subscribers? Turns out he was also selling his social video startup Beme to CNN. The broadcaster will be using Beme to create a new venture “…aimed at reaching millennial viewers with the street cred of Neistat’s reporting and commentary.” Put another way, that could mean we can expect more user-generated news on CNN going forward.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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Sad news from the UK that Andrew Sachs who played the hapless waiter Manuel in the BBC’s Fawlty Towers has died. He was 86 and had been suffering
from dementia since 2012. View some of the best bits that represent a unique
piece of 1970s British sitcom history here. |
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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| Ahh December and there is no denying that the Christmas season is upon us. Here’s a great Xmassy feel-good ad from H&M starring Adrien Brody and very stylishly directed by Wes Anderson. Anderson himself is no stranger to the world of commercial ads – check out the list of top ten Anderson commercials as complied by Adweek. |
