Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Dec 4th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
According to sources, Naspers, Africa’s biggest company by market value, is planning to expand its video-streaming competitor to Netflix across three continents in 2016 while Samsung has agreed to include the service on its smart TVs. Naspers CEO Bob van Dijk is overseeing the expansion of ShowMax, which only launched in August this year. The move into online streaming is the latest evolution of a South African business that started as a newspaper publisher and is now an investor in emerging-market startups including Tencent and India’s Ibibo.
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
As the CASBAA team is building the programme for the upcoming OTT Summit in Q1 2016, a number of programming biggies are expanding their OTT offerings around the world. Discovery just launched an authenticated TV everywhere app, Discovery Go, for the US market. It combines content from 9 US networks featuring aggregated access to live TV feeds and on-demand shows. Nickelodeon has teamed with MENA pay-TV operator OSN to offer Nickelodeon Play as an app. And in the UK, Disney just came out with DisneyLife which offers monthly subscribers a collection of Disney-owned movies, books, music and TV shows. Possibly by the time of the OTT Summit, there will be some announcements for Asia.
China accounted for one in every four new ad dollars spent worldwide over the last decade, while the US now spends less on advertising per head than it did ten years ago. Meanwhile, TV and internet were the only media to have gained share of global ad expenditure over the last ten years. Of the $519.6bn spent on advertising worldwide last year, television accounted for two in every five dollars, its share rising 4 percentage points since 2005.
… And staying with 4K, it seems there is a glut of pirated 4K content appearing on torrent sites who are rapidly adding 4K copies of movies and TV programmes. At this stage it’s thought the content has probably been ripped from Amazon or Netflix. Alarmingly the sheer volume being offered suggests pirates have had an encryption-breaking breakthrough. It’s still not clear what has made it possible for pirates to bypass content encryption, or what streaming sites can do to stop it. The cat and mouse game will run and run, with streaming sites working to secure their files… while pirates will attempt to circumvent security and continue to steal.
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
One really wonders what propels entrepreneurs in India to get into the business of broadcasting despite the fact that most licensed channels would admit their bottom-lines are scarlet; especially those in the news and current affairs category except some that are part of big corporate houses who are subsidising the losses from revenues from either other businesses or those earned from GECs in either Hindi or some major Indian languages. When critics say the entry level thresholds for a licence are still much low — about three years back MIB reviewed those norms for an upward revision — they do have a point, it seems. Telecom, I&B ministry to use broadcast airwaves for mobile services.
The Paradox of Choice (TED Talk here) happens to me every time I go buy a pair of shoes and it’s now reeling its ugly head in the TV space. “An increasing number of TV viewers feel ‘overwhelmed’ by too many TV shows and too many TV platforms.” "Now, 51% say there are so many shows to choose from that it’s hard to know ‘where to start’”. The trend is up from 42% in 2014. This tells me that we are going to see a lot more TV recommendation engines in the future. Though for me the solution is simple: hand my wife the remote control…and always take her with me to the shoe store.
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Nov 27th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
Let’s have a debate: Just how much responsibility should internet firms take, for preventing use of their networks for piracy? It’s clear they have to do SOMETHING to qualify for “safe harbor” treatment (and avoid being sued themselves), but just how much? Kim Dotcom claims he did all the necessary by disabling some links to pirated content (leaving the content “up” to be re-linked later). His lawyer told the NZ court hearing his extradition case that there should be no criminal liability for the owners of Megaupload based on the illegal actions of its users. The 10-week long extradition hearing just closed; within a few weeks we should find out if he’ll have to go to the USA and face the music, so to speak. Dotcom professed to be optimistic because the judge is the same one who granted him bail.
Last week at the Paley International Council Summit in New York, the heavy hitters of media got together to share their insights and visions of the future. James Murdoch believes that video ads like Facebook’s are “Not Really Earning Anybody’s Attention” and that “cable and satellite companies haven’t really innovated enough over the last 20 years”. Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins shared that the company’s revenue is about 50:50 advertising and subscriptions and calls the company’s dual revenue streams “a powerful advantage.” Disney’s Andy Bird and Claudio Chiaromonte discussed their approach to bringing Disney magic to international territories without a cookie cutter approach.
Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
Chinese video-on-demand service provider YOU On Demand (YOD) has announced it will supply Hollywood films to Ai Shang Media (China IPTV). China IPTV, a joint venture between China Network Television (CNTV) and Shanghai Media Group, is the only integrated for-profit IPTV platform operating across the country under the authority of public broadcaster CNTV. After initially licensing several IPTV providers, the Chinese authorities decided that a single provider was easier to control, so CNTV itself now controls all of China’s IPTV platforms across all 31 provinces, with potentially 40+ million IPTV users.
In Thailand, the digitization of broadcast TV has turned into a massive legal mess. Digital TV licensee (and newspaper publisher) The Nation Group has sued the NBTC regulators, saying they have been “negligent” in facilitating the transition from analogue to digital TV. Among other things, the suit asks for delay in the very large license payments due from channel owners who made huge bets in the licensing auction – bets that don’t look so good now. The Nation channels also want the regulator to more energetically force pay-TV operators to put the digital FTA channels at the head of the line-up, but meanwhile True Visions and a group of satellite TV operators have also sued, asking a court to block NBTC renumbering rules. Sounds to me like a commercial tug-of-war disguised as a legal struggle, with the regulator playing the role of rope, being pulled back and forth. More suits seem likely. (I’m not sure if any TV companies will benefit, but the lawyers will make out like bandits…..)
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
This is really interesting for the industry, betting big on digital distribution, and the Indian government that’s grappling with norms for OTT services. Netflix, having hinted at a 2016 Indian entry, plans to stream globally Hindi film ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ as an eight-part series. The film is set in the north Indian States’ badlands of coal mining and is replete with local cuss words and steamy sex scenes. The movie is planned to be streamed with English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Chinese subtitles. Indian media majors are actively seeking global markets; this week Star-TV upped the ante and went global with Hindi content via its successful Hotstar OTT platform.
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
The numbers are always huge in India (and China, too), but sometimes you have to look at what’s behind the numbers. TRAI has just made known that almost 50% of the DTH boxes in the country are “inactive,” i.e. not being paid. There are an estimated 78.7 satellite antennas and STBs in the market.
Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
It would be remiss for us not to mention the formal declaration for launching the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) which could someday be similar to European Union (EU)-style regional economic bloc. Proponents believe that — with certain caveats and national interests notwithstanding — the signing of the AEC declaration this week can transform ASEAN into a region with free movement of goods, services, investment, skilled labour, and freer flow of capital. The AEC officially comes into being on December 31st but in case you’re wondering, a unified market with consensus on regulatory and broadcast issues is still a very long way off – just look at Europe, which has had a lot more political will than the ASEAN governments.
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Nov 20th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
Mark your calendars as there will be a year-end CASBAA Cocktails in Singapore on December 1. Check your inbox for details coming soon. And during those cocktails, I am sure that we will be debating Facebook is the Internet and 13 Other Things that Media People Debate at Dinner Over Drinks. My faves: #5 To get to massive scale, a paid streaming video business has to get there through a non-digital backdoor, #6 For a glimpse of the future of video, look at Crunchyroll and, #8 “If you’ve got an audience, you’ll make money” is nonsense. Cheers.
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
After the initial euphoria, it’s time for examining the slip between the cup and the lip. And, it seems the gap between the slips (if one uses a cricket analogy) is enough to let go of catches. If existing cross-services restrictions and lack of total control (in case of TV news venture) is considered, Indian government’s recently-announced relaxed FDI norms for media sector has made many players keep the champagne bottles back in the freezer. Or, so it seems if private conversations and media reports are to be believed. Though a recurring theme in media is whether Rupert Murdoch would re-enter TV news biz in India with 49% FDI, some commentators are cautiously optimistic. And, the print medium, left untouched by such relaxations, are scurrying to read any message between the lines, while remaining divided over foreign investments.
In Taipei, discussions on new TV regulatory legislation continue. Chinese-language press reports say that the amount of price regulation has figured in the talks; NCC proposals call for maintenance of price controls on a basic tier, but (maybe some) greater pricing freedom at higher tiers.
Yegee Chun
Regulatory Assistant
South Korea’s Ministry of ICT, Science, and Future Planning (MSIP) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the NBTC in Thailand to formalize their mutual commitment to launching an international collaborative program. As part of its Global Cooperation initiative, the MSIP strives to work with South Asian countries to strengthen their emerging broadcasting infrastructure. With the signing of the MOU, the MSIP hopes to further advance Korean content distribution in Thailand, where demand for South Korean content has been surging in recent years, as well as improve joint human resources in the broadcasting sector and create opportunities for joint film production. MSIP also stated that a similar MOU with Vietnam is currently undergoing negotiation.
Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
Some entertaining, if perhaps confusing, news from Sydney this week where it was announced that Australia will compete for the second time in the Eurovision song contest next year. Traditionally the winner of the contest hosts the following year, but if Australia won, the 2017 contest would still take place in Europe and Australia’s SBS would co-host with a European public broadcaster. According to the European Broadcasting Union the jury is still out on whether Australia would become a permanent participant. Last year “nul points” aficionado and Eurovsion’s UK host Graham Norton described the inclusion of Australia as “a nonsense”. But then this is the Eurovision Song Contest, so who was expecting anything else?
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
The “dueling studies” concerning re-allocation of satellite C-band for mobile systems continue to reverberate, at the WRC in Geneva.
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
People in the TV business often look for lessons from what happened with the music industry. It’s fine to understand what hasn’t worked well, but it’s more fun to look at what is working well. Best to read “Lessons from the PC video game industry” when your mind is in a creative state. “What the PC game industry figured out is that in a world of abundant media, users have endless choices; instead of fighting for scarcity, fight for attention. Maximize user engagement and money will — with enough experiments — inevitably follow.” It may be time to start embracing experiments.
Here’s an interesting little piece, which explains the difference between 4K and UHD video. It turns out that a lot of stuff being sold as “4K” isn’t really that – it’s UHD.
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Nov 13th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
In Geneva, the global mobile phone industry is doing its level best to grab the satellite C-band spectrum. (Oh, they call it “sharing…” And what other kind of “sharing” theft comes to mind?) The first part of the ITU’s WRC conference was marked by release of dueling studies, with the GSMA claiming that if telcos were only given oodles and oodles of new spectrum, the world would find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The satellite industry responded, noting a fair analysis needs to take account of the costs that would impose on current satellite users (that’s us, boys and girls, plus hundreds of millions of TV viewers), and that the claimed benefits were “grossly exaggerated.”
Starhub just announced some great financial results booking a net profit of $118.7 million for the three months ended Sept 30. This is up 21.5 per cent, compared with the same period in the previous year. Starhub also "are excited to be exploring the partnership with Netflix," said StarHub chief marketing officer Howie Lau. "However, he added : "Discussions right now are in a commercial stage, so we are not able to share too much details.” Aravind Venugopal, from CASBAA member Media Partners Asia, has a piece this week analyzing the proposed partnership. And, as we found out last month from the NYT, “in many countries, Netflix faces an uphill challenge."
Indian Space & Research Organisation (ISRO)’s latest satellite launched, GSAT15, brings good news for users of satellite capacity. But the joy could be limited for broadcast and telecoms sectors. Agreed GSAT15 carries 24 KU-band transponders, which could be used by DTH operators whose growth plans presently are severely hampered by inadequate supply of transponder capacity, but it remains to be seen how many transponders are allotted to needy DTH ops. India’s commendable satellite story starts meandering here. Indian customers’ need for satellite capacity and ISRO’s lack of interest in clearing foreign satellite capacity just don’t match leading to helplessness all round.
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
The NCC in Taiwan wants to propose three major legislative revisions, and some of the clauses would actually lessen regulation on the cable industry. I can understand that, as the current commissioners inherited a legislative hodgepodge written in the last century that overregulates just about everybody; nobody’s very happy with the status quo. Hearings are planned… but don’t expect quick action. That’s not a hallmark of Taiwan’s democracy.
On the heels of 2020 session at the CASBAA Convention, YouTube is seemingly taking advantage of the HUGE buzz we created (smirk) by announcing their grand plan to make VR accessible to everybody. "The goal is to ‘democratize virtual reality’ and ‘bring VR to everybody, no matter who you are or what your favorite piece of content is’.” For live sports, VR is really moving forward. A very cool company, NextVR, has developed a custom lens-to-lens system for capturing and delivering live and on-demand virtual reality experiences in true broadcast quality. One punter says "I Watched an NBA Game With Next VR and I Can’t Go Back to Normal TV”.
Recent chai pe charcha (discussion over tea) and Silicon Valley digital bonding with a tech-savvy PM Narendra Modi notwithstanding, tech biggies are finding it difficult to push through initiatives in India. If it was Facebook’s internet.org mission that ran into a wall of net neutrality proponents, it’s now Microsoft, which is under attack by telcos and broadband players for its plans to harness ‘white spaces’ for last mile connectivity.
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Nov 6th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
While we were carousing and Convention-ing last week, the European Parliament voted in favor of a single set of rules for “net neutrality” across Europe. According to the EU Commission, the rules ban blocking and throttling of internet content, give users access to the full and open internet, allow for “specialized services” with assured quality (such as streamed TV and video on demand), and give consumers the right to check if they are receiving the internet speeds they pay for, and to walk away from their contract if those commitments are not met. (BTW, all that has pretty much been CASBAA’s position.) But oh, what a cacophony of bleating resulted, from the usual alliances of “netizen” groups and their corporate backers. They lamented that the rules don’t ban network management, prioritization nor zero-rating. “It’s a vote against net neutrality!” “A major blow!” “The web will be in the grip of… (horrors!)… corporate interests!” Yadda yadda yadda. After the smoke cleared, what was interesting was the very large majority of the Parliament that decided to favor investment in quality networks over self-interested “neutrality” ideology. Meanwhile, on the other side, both telecom operators and broadcasters welcomed the rules. Guess if you’re trying to run a business, the simplistic solutions don’t always sound best…
The new Apple TV is out and the reviews are starting to come in. What is interesting is how apps from different programming suppliers: traditional broadcast networks and cable channels to new exotic entrants like Periscope are now able to comfortably commingle. I recently coffee’d with a well-known "Independent Media Consultant” who was considering the parallels between the music and the pay TV industries. This topic is discussed in, Why does Apple TV deserve to exist? A lot of truth to the line, "Paying $150/month to watch incontinence and erectile dysfunction ads—at a time not of your choosing—is preposterous for the young."
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
BARC’s rolled out its new rural service in India and the data is interesting. For the first time FTA channels made it to the Top 10 Hindi GEC category. Other key trends highlighted 17 per cent of rural India viewers fall in the 15-21 years age group vs 14% of urban India, which is 14 per cent. However, the advertising industry wants to wait for more rural data before moving in for any effective killing. Meanwhile, BARC CEP Partho Dasgupta revealed at CASBAA Convention recently in Hong Kong that BARC is looking at having common panel for multi-screen measurement to capture effectively fragmentation. Seems BARC’s just warming up.
And in case you were wondering, Irdeto has declared that “The Walking Dead” was the most pirated scary show, in the run-up to Halloween. Pirate Zombies! (As opposed to the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which was full of Zombie pirates…)
In a sign of the OTT times the British Film Institute has launched an online movie streaming service called BFI Player+. The monthly subscription service offers a 30-day free trial for all users and was developed to meet the demand for people to view the best of a century of cinema. A total of 300 film titles are available for selection at launch, with films grouped to help users browse around genres, collections and directors. Rights issues aside, the BFI also holds the largest accessible television collection archive of British TV programmes in the world which would make for an interesting business model should they ever find a way to start streaming all of their other content.
So, I watched the very first season of Star Trek in my family living room, on a black-and-white TV. Loved it. Times change… I’m going to be watching the next season online in HD, it seems. (Geez, I hope it’s available in Asia… are there enough trekkies out here?)
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Oct 22nd. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
At next week’s CASBAA Convention, I’ll be doing an onstage chat with the head of India’s TRAI, R.S. Sharma, and “net neutrality” is sure to come up. Following PM Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley, this commentator descried a “lean” towards favoring digital access for more Indians (which requires big investments) over absolute neutrality.
The painful decline of pay TV platforms may not be happening like some headlines lead us to believe. "European pay TV operator Sky has posted strong results with subscribers, revenue and profit all up in the most recent quarter, despite increased competition from Netflix and other pay TV services. This is while Netflix "third-quarter profit tumbled 50 percent compared with last year, missing its forecasts as it reported worse-than-expected streaming growth in the United States.” And, Yahoo "took a $42 million write-down in its video division during the third quarter… CFO Ken Goldman later explained that Community, Sin City Saints and Other Space were to blame, noting that Yahoo ‘couldn’t see a way to make money over time.’ “ What is Sky doing so right?
YouTube has finally launched its new paid-subscription service that will be ad-free. The new service, called YouTube Red, will offer commercial-free access for $US9.99 a month starting on October 28, initially only in the United States. The traditional YouTube site backed by commercials will remain available and free.
Thailand, which was for years the land of “no regulation” when it came to TV, is now the land of crazy regulation. A vignette from this week: The NBTC announced that evil pay-TV operators were using (presumably buying) programs from digital FTA channels, and rebroadcasting the programs with ads intact. Horrors!!!! This meant consumers were being exposed to 12 minutes of ads per hour instead of the pay-TV limit of 6 minutes!!!! Consumers must be protected from this exploitation, thundered the NBTC. More likely the FTA licensees want the protection from competitors……
The Wall Street Journal had their Digital Live conference this week. Ex-Yahoo board member / ex-MTV COO, Michael Wolf, gave a presentation on the future of media: The 9 most important insights for tech and media in 2016. If 136 pages of deck is too much to chew through before your Friday night cocktail, jump to slide 58 for “The Long Awaited Cord-Cutting Moment is Still Far Off”. For "There Is A ‘Cable Killer’ Coming But It Won’t Look Like You Expect", jump to slide 86. Enjoy!
Yegee Chun
Regulatory Assistant
Malaysian police arrested four guys who were selling Indian DTH boxes in Malaysia, in violation of that country’s laws. 120 boxes and dishes seized. Overspill boxes are a nuisance for the huge Indian DTH operators, but a big pain for pay-TV operators in other South and Southeast Asian markets.
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Oct 16th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
Chandra made headlines on another issue: There’s been a lot of whining that self-regulation of content by the Indian broadcasting industry has failed, and a lot of that whining concerns malpractices by news channels. Chandra told a conference that the problem is with the dodgy people who own the news channels! Quoth Chandra: “I can bet that 70 per cent of owners of the 300-something news channels … are not eligible to do so.” And there are other problems, too….including stringers selling coverage to people who want it. (Shocking! In Asia????)
Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
While Twitter-owned Periscope has raised more than a few eyebrows in the broadcast arena over the last few months, this week its parent company Twitter has announced that it will be sacking hundreds of staff, as the company attempts to stem its slowing growth. CEO Jack Dorsey finally revealed the much-speculated news in an email sent to employees, titled "A more focused Twitter". It means that around 8 per cent of Twitter’s global workforce will be laid off.
Will Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio do what Bill Gates’ Windows did? A bit OTT, given the present industry status in India, but not totally unimaginable. Remember what an undivided and cash-rich Reliance group did with the telecoms sector over a decade back when it unleashed dirt cheap mobile handsets plus then-unthinkable low call pricing structure — and thus a telecoms revolution.
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
The question of how to monetize OTT video seems to always come up. An excellent example is Sony’s Crackle where "sometimes what worked in the old days of TV can work online.” With an estimated $63 million in revenues through this past March, Crackle is on track to become profitable. This subscription-free service "clocks 22 million monthly uniques and promises brand partners a 93% ad completion rate and an engaged audience.” I have been engaged ever since the first episode of Comedian’s in Cars Getting Coffee. That’s the one where Jerry Seinfeld picks up Larry David in a ‘52 VW Beetle. Perfect car for Larry. And, Crackle’s latest show, The Art of More, apparently drew strong sales recently in Cannes.
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Oct 9th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
Branded content is a recurrent theme at CASBAA events, and this year’s Convention is no exception — be sure to catch our panel on integrating brands and content on Wednesday morning. But before that, you might also have a look at Emily Nussbaum’s excellent New Yorker article on what advertising does to TV.
Facebook is starting to get more into the TV space. Last week they “took a page from YouTube’s playbook and started behaving like TV”. “You can be as big as you want, but for now at least, you’re going to need to speak the language of the oldest guys in the room.” And this week Facebook Enhances Tools for TV Producers to Engage Fans. “The new tools, which have been tested in early iterations with partners, will let TV production teams introduce live polling and voting, as well as provide the ability to more easily curate fan-submitted photos, videos and posts from Facebook and Instagram.” Is the fox charming their way into the henhouse?
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Oct 2nd. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
Talks about liberalising FDI for news media in India keeps cropping up from time to time and the latest one makes cynics believe it’s like a sounding board when unnamed government sources are quoted saying a proposal to increase FDI to 49% from 26% is being studied. MIB and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had stated in January 2015 that FDI caps and their practicality need to be debated in a digital era, but then it needs a strong political will to push through such a radical policy decision. Is PM Modi’s recent US trip and meeting with top honchos of global media, any catalyst? Optimism apart, we don’t expect such a change to come through very soon, though.
Our business keeps changing. This week I have something for everyone about what we can do about it. For those of you in marketing take note of ‘The Great Unbundling of Marketing is Here‘. “Marketing has a problem nowadays: It’s too confusing.” For you programmers, Pilot Error: Top TV Critics on Reviewing New Shows in the Binge-Watching Era. “With fewer viewers watching TV as it airs, does it matter if the first episode is any good?” And for those playing the long game, the economist brings us, Naked Capitalism. “The internet blew the porn industry’s business model apart. Its response holds lessons for other media firms.”
There has been a lot of discussion since Apple announced that it would allow enhanced ad-blocking in IOS9. The fallout has hardy been realized but it will affect everyone in the advertising business. And maybe more so, here in Asia, where the mobile phone is THE device. Some think this is a brilliant assault by Apple directly against Google. Others believe that adblockers are The Only Way Out for news organizations. But there really is no question that the introduction of ad-free video streaming sites and increased ad-blocking on both PC’s and mobile devices will have a major effect. Those in the TV advertising space take notice: REFORM ADVERTISING…before it is too late.
Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
It’s being reported that Google is prepping a subscription to pair two YouTube offerings. YouTube’s Music Key service (which provides ad-free music videos and audio-only streams), and a pending service providing ad-free access to general YouTube content, will now be bundled instead of being sold separately. Google has reportedly told video industry sources that it plans to charge $10 per month for the combined service – a price matching that charged by Spotify and others for standalone subscription music offerings. According to sources the subscription service could be launched this month. A letter from YouTube reportedly told producers to agree to new terms by Oct. 22 or their videos will be taken offline.
Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Sep 25th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
Two new reports highlight third screen viewing. Every third viewing hour is apparently now spent watching on-demand television and video. The Ericsson ConsumerLab TV and Media Report suggests that 35% of all television and video viewing is now watched on demand and that young adults spend more than half their television viewing time on a portable screen. The findings are not entirely consistent with traditional television viewing estimates. For years, most of us had just one screen in our living rooms: the television. Over the past decade, laptops, tablets and smartphones have all muscled in on this relationship. Is the smartphone TV’s friend or foe?
Media buyer Carat has predicted that programmatic transactions in the US will account for 52% of non-search digital advertising by the end of 2015, and will continue to grow. Carat’s latest worldwide advertising expenditure forecasts for 2015 and 2016 predicts global advertising spend to grow by 4% in 2015 to US$529bn — a slight decline from the 4.6% growth predicted in March — and by 4.7% in 2016.
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
The Indian government (read Telecoms and IT Ministry) has done it again— withdrawn the draft encryption policy that was put out on its website for public comments after massive public outrage over proposed government control, Big Brother syndrome and breach of privacy (it was proposed an ordinary citizen cannot delete his/her WhatsApp and other social media messages, etc before 90 days). Earlier a paper on OTT and net neutrality was withdrawn by DoT. Jokes abounding on social media and weak defence by Minister notwithstanding, a commentator highlighted how the draft policy defeated the purpose for which it was being sought to be created. “Expecting every single citizen to know how to use the government-prescribed encryption services was perhaps asking too much,” the critic opined, adding with so much data floating around in plain text format, it would be easy for hackers to steal data. And, what happens if someone manipulates the data in these text files — how will the law handle that? Keep tuned in for more updates.
Oh no! Say it isn’t true! Winnie the Pooh got banned by censors in Poland. Said the official: “It is half-naked, which is wholly inappropriate for children. A proper teddy bear is dressed from head to toe….” At least that example of censorship silliness didn’t come from Asia; we have enough of our own. Of course, the ultimate silliness is that the censors ignore what people can watch on the internet, while clobbering the pay-TV industry.
