25 April, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending April 25th. 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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John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	Garbage in, garbage out: This commentary notes that satellites are critical for the broadcasting industry to move programming around the world and distribute it over wide areas. So the ITU debate over taking away satellite spectrum really matters to broadcasters. The European Broadcasting Union recently weighed in, analyzing spectrum demand from competing terrestrial services, and finding that current forecasting methodologies vastly overstate likely mobile spectrum needs. The EBU’s experts said the statistical level of confidence in the ITU’s current projections is “virtually zero,” and they warned of significantly adverse impacts on terrestrial broadcasting, satellite services, the cultural and content industries, and society in general. Note to governments: decisions based on garbage numbers will produce garbage policies…
Desmond Chung Associate Director, PR & Communications	So, is the threat of “cord-cutters” real or overblown? According to Experian Marketing Services, an estimated 7.6 million U.S. homes are considered cord-cutters watching streaming or downloaded video during a typical week. And where are they all going? Well, if you are an HBO fan, Amazon, and its associated devices, may be your destination of choice. And music video fans are apparently flocking to Vevo, with monthly viewership up nearly 50 percent to 6 billion! But never fear, Experian also adds: “television is likely to remain the primary device for consumer video.”
Sara Madera Director, Member Relations & Marketing	Tumblr is making a play for TV advertising dollars stating that, with time shifted viewing, they are getting more TV talk than Twitter. During a show, Twitter may be the social media of choice but, once you take a few days for the rest of us to catch up, Tumblr offers more total users, with deeper conversation and more engagement. But if they want to be a true player in this space, they need to work on providing analytics. Users are key, but measurement is king.
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	Latest from Macau: Macau Cable TV’s license has been renewed for five years, but without the “exclusivity” clause contained in its previous concession (which was never respected anyway, with “antenna companies” serving most Macau households.) The cable company is being given rights to sell triple-play bundles, and compete with telco CTM. Meanwhile, the government has gazetted establishment of its publicly-owned entity to supply FTA channels to Macau households.
Mandy Wu Regulatory Assistant	Content Isn’t Cheap. Streaming service Netflix announced plans to increase its price after a quarterly earnings report showed that profits edged out analyst estimates. The news of a price hike comes as Netflix continues to add new subscribers at a rapid pace
	Join our CASBAA 101 breakfast gathering on 29 April in HK to learn more about how you can get CASBAA working for you. Get involved, network and have a nibble! Reserve your free spot here (members only).

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18 April, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Apr 18th. This week’s edition is coming to you a little earlier so you can have more time to hunt for Easter eggs and enjoy the weekend! As always, let us know your thoughts and feedback.

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John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	Mad about Football in Singapore: In a carefully balanced statement, a Singaporean Minister of State told Parliament that the island republic is such a small market that it has to be a “price taker” and not a “price maker” for global football events. He recognized that while many fans there are “football mad,” they are also “mad” (angry) about perceived high prices for the FIFA World Cup series. “The more “desperate” Singapore was to acquire the World Cup broadcast rights, the more leverage it would give FIFA to charge a higher price,” said the Minister. How very true – and not only FIFA. Here’s the solution: fencing lessons, anyone?
Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant	What are you? A one-screener, a two-screener, a multi-screener ? Millward Brown have a new UK based report that says “taking advantage of multi-screen behaviour is consistency and the biggest opportunity is not simultaneous connections between screens, but rather a consistent presence across screens.”
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	All praise to the City of London Police, as Scotland Yard adopts a very positive stance on intellectual property protection. The police intellectual property crime unit has recently established a list of pirate websites that will be used by advertisers and the ad industry in the UK to deflect online ads away from support of piracy. CASBAA’s research is finding that mainstream advertiser support for Asian pirate sites is even worse than for global sites. So… which Asian police force will step up to do the right thing here?
Desmond Chung Associate Director, PR & Communications	When examining the common couch potato, it is important to note how the species has adapted to its changing environment. Notice how the sofa spud is now using new tools to research, access and participate with content…and to socialize with others of its kind. Google has published some new research into this creature’s ocular habits. A sedentary organism, perhaps as their evolution continues, they will evolve the ability of movement.
Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant	Australians are watching more conventional TV than they did a year ago, consuming an average of 92 hours and 39 minutes each month in the fourth quarter of 2013, a huge increase of 1 hour and 34 minutes since the same period in 2012. The new report jointly compiled by measurement companies OzTAM, Nielsen and Regional TAM, found that even though traditional TV wins, Australians spent 5 hours and 52 minutes a month watching video on the internet, 1 hour and 56 minutes watching online video on a mobile phone and 1 hour and 47 minutes watching online video on a tablet.
	Join our CASBAA 101 breakfast gathering on 29 Apr in HK to learn more about how you can get CASBAA working for you. Get involved, network and have a nibble! Reserve your free spot here (members only).

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11 April, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Apr 11th. 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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John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that website blocking is a balanced and effective way to counter copyright infringement. Some say that this ruling “breaks the internet”. If you think the internet is about anarchy and freely taking (and distributing!) what is not yours, then sure: that may be broken. But if you agree that the Internet must be part of society, where the same rules apply and where rule of law, democracy and human rights prevail, then the CJEU ruling rather fixes the Internet than breaks it.
Christopher Slaughter CEO	As predicted, the Comcast / Time Warner Cable deal is undergoing serious scrutiny, this week on Capitol Hill. Proving that Washington is nothing if not ironic, a key critic of the deal is Senator Al Franken, who started his career on the TV show “Saturday Night Live.”
Desmond Chung Associate Director, PR & Communications	Instead of pounding the final nail into the pay-TV coffin, perhaps it’s time to start yanking out all the other ones. According to the quarterly Multiscreen Index, published by informitv, the number of homes worldwide paying to watch television is continuing to rise with the Asia Pacific region showing the greatest growth, up 1.63 million subscribers in the last quarter. Good news for couch potatoes everywhere!
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	More order on the Chinese internet: An Article in “Global Times” gives some interesting insights into the way Chinese censorship standards are being made to apply to content supplied by major internet portals in China. It seems foreign producers can be happy (well sort of) that they don’t have to engage in the same approval process as domestic video producers, who: “are required to file a report containing a plot outline and basic information about directors and actors signed by at least three auditors and chief auditors, before uploading content to SAPPRFT to receive a unique code that allows the show to be released on the site.” Whew – lifetime employment for those auditor guys.
Christopher Slaughter CEO	Want to know how much of your life you’ve spent watching TV? Just plug the names of all your favourite TV shows into this database, then sit back and watch the days fly by. And if you doubt the power of the medium, this fun fact: before Game of Thrones, “Khaleesi” was not a popular name for girls. Now it is. And if case you think people who name their babies after TV characters are taking things too seriously, at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, students can enroll in a course called “Mad Men: Media, Gender, Historiography”, and get college credit for watching TV.
Sara Madera Director, Member Relations & Marketing	At MIPTV, Twitter’s chief media scientist Deb Roy called her platform a synchronized social soundtrack to your favorite shows, movies and live events – making it a better partner for TV than “you-know-who”. (Twitter popped up to say the same thing at CASBAA’s OTT Summit in Singapore last month.) Certainly Twitter’s analytics help you to know who’s on top— something their rival can’t touch. Ouch! How “Mean Girls”.
Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant	There are two articles published this week on similar themes. The first one asks “How do you put a price on magic?” In other words, how can an increasing focus on cost drive an industry that is as much about changing impressions and attitudes as it is about meeting a bottom line?Next, people working in media are now so blasé about how their industry has changed beyond recognition in the last decade that they’ve lost all belief in their management’s ability to do something about it. But they can.
Mandy Wu Regulatory Assistant	CASBAA and the National Communications Commission recently hosted an International Seminar on Cable TV Policies and Practices in Taiwan on April 8 to explore the country’s plans to restructure its regulation of the cable-TV industry. Over 100 industry leaders, government officials, academics and foreign experts discussed options for the restructuring and heard about other countries’ experiences in developing their own broadcasting policies.

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28 March, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Mar 28th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Jill Grinda

Executive Vice President

So, while I think we always knew, it seems that TV viewers in Australia take the lead from online friends according to a recent research from Nielsen. More than one in three consumers aged 16-24 read other peoples’ comments about TV or movie content on a weekly basis, or more often. Content that people ‘feel strongly about’ has emerged as an important driver of online social behavior.The North American market may have cord-cutting, cord-shaving and a growing number of ‘cord-nevers’, but the pay-TV arena is set to add five million subscribers by the end of 2020, says Digital TV Research. The report calculates that the market will reverse a decline reported in 2013 and grow solidly to 116.6 million by 2020, even though pay-TV penetration will drop from 87% in 2010 to 83.8% by 2020.

And I take this opportunity to bid you a farewell and a heartfelt thank you to all of our CASBAA supporters. It’s been great working with you over the past three years.

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Some good news out of Europe: the Court of Justice of the European Union has upheld the legality of judicial orders to block pirate websites. The European courts continue to advance the jurisprudence on this issue, allowing rights owners to take action against some of the most egregious pirate websites.

Sara Madera

Director, Member Relations & Marketing

Say it isn’t so! Finally, a script writer is talking about her experiences behind the scenes in the word of reality TV. I’d watch her shows just for her educated feminist point of view – but isn’t it a relief to acknowledge that reality shows aren’t well…really real?

Desmond Chung

Associate Director, PR & Communications

Aereo kidding me? Aereo Founder and CEO Chet Kanojia says he has “hope and confidence” that the US Supreme Court will find in its favour when the copyright action brought against it by a group of broadcasters is heard April 22nd. At stake is how the industry will view legitimate content and what is considered “theft”. Stay tuned for further developments!

Godfrey Chan

Marketing & Member Relations Executive

An inevitable trend throughout the global broadcasting industry, Thailand will begin digital TV broadcast trials on April 1 to officially kick-off its TV digitalization dream. Click here to learn how digital TV will affect TV viewing habits.

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21 March, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Mar 21st. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	War of Words on Copyright: Efforts in the USA last week to promote voluntary cooperation among industry groups to fight online piracy raised the hackles of the “Internet Profits Must Be Free” crowd. Slate magazine published a pair of commentaries that are worth reading. The first one, by a Google-employed lawyer, denounces voluntary agreements to fight piracy, and engages in familiar scare tactics that intentionally confuse pirate websites with the entire Internet. “With these voluntary agreements, copyright holders can starve websites of their funding, strip them of their domain names, and remove them from search.” (Well yuh…..if they’re sites dedicated to piracy!)And then Slate published a riposte, from the writer who created the “Sons of Anarchy” TV series. (He makes his money from paid content, unlike the lawyer who makes his from free content.) The Internet lobby, he says, has clear motivations. “Do they do this because they hate artists? No. They do it because they love money.” The writer says their interest is to “create more traffic and more data streams. Unfortunately, those streams are now pristine, digital ones of our work, which all flow into a huge watershed of semi-dirty cash.”
Jill Grinda Executive Vice President	We knew that there was huge room for growth in Asian pay TV penetration and new research confirms it. According to a new report from Digital TV Research, the Asia-Pacific region is going through a period of rapid digital conversion, with penetration increasing from 28.9% of TV households in 2010 to 51.7% in 2013 and 61.2% by the end of this year. China will provide 225 million of the extra digital TV homes, with India adding a further 118 million.
Desmond Chung Associate Director, PR & Communications	“Parting is such sweet sorrow”, opined Juliet, but apparently potential cord-cutters in America are having a hard time saying good-bye to their beloved cable TV. According to the Leichtman Research Group, the total subscriber losses for the TV industry last year were 104,521 — about 0.1% of customers. But nearly 17% of a Morgan Stanley survey said they would “definitely” or “probably” cut the cord. Something’s not adding up here!
Jill Grinda Executive Vice President	The Ukraine crisis has been the major focus of news this week and UN chief Ban Ki-moon visits Moscow to urge a diplomatic solution to the crisis. So we were quite curious to learn via the satirical Borowitz Report in the New Yorker that there has been a major ramping up of sanctions, with John Kerry announcing last Tuesday that the United States had frozen Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Netflix account, effective immediately. Hhhhmmm…fact or fiction…
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	CASBAA has been in the thick of preparations for Asian consideration of how to respond to likely attempts at the 2015 ITU WRC meeting to grab the C-band spectrum that is so important to the Asian broadcasting industry (among others.) Now the preparatory process (and the debates that are already ongoing) have broken into the global press. For those who might want to know more about the current debate, see this article written by one of the leading members of CASBAA’s Wireless Action Group. And a template letter to regulators plus other materials can be found here.
Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant	An interesting article on how brands deal with crisis situations, in the wake of the Malaysian airline disappearance and how Malaysia Airlines is dealing with it too.
Mandy Wu Regulatory Assistant	“Dancing Round the Maypole of Deregulation” seems to be the latest sport in Canberra, once the politicians get finished fighting over which channel to watch in the Parliamentary gym. What fun!

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14 March, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Mar 14th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Brought to you by:

Christopher Slaughter

CEO

Authentication processes for OTT services are still too “clunky”, ESPN head John Skipper said during a session at SXSW this week. Skipper should know, since he first took charge of what was then ESPN.com back in 2000, and has watched the online service develop massively since then. But his valid criticism highlights one of the key aspects of the OTT user experience, an area where much work remains to be done. No surprise, then, that authentication is a topic that will be explored at length in CASBAA’s OTT Summit in Singapore on March 25th!Meanwhile, Skipper’s comments came during the annual SXSW conference, which wrapped up in Austin,Texas this week. What started as an indie music festival has morphed into a must-attend hipster love-in notionally devoted to tech, but actually devoted to marketing and social media. And what was the hippest trend at SXSW this year? Plain old television.

Desmond Chung

Associate Director, PR & Communications

In case you have been living on a frozen orb out in the Kuiper belt, tongues have been wagging over the announcement that Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television Group, is stepping away after 18 years to pursue her dream of directing. Read about her decision in her own words. The new game in town now is playing “guess who will replace Sweeney”. Forget the Oscars pool – this is in a whole different league!

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Two great commentaries on media regulation in Australia!The Sydney Morning Herald’s view shows eminent good sense! And it is applicable to governments all over Asia, not just Australia: “The starting point (for dealing with convergence) has to be that less regulation beats trying to control a rapidly moving market where consumer preference increasingly rules.”

A commentary entitled “Time to ditch antiquated media regulations” on the ABC website states it even more clearly: “It is fundamentally absurd that the same (media ownership) restrictions…are being applied to our media-rich world as were being applied to the media-constrained world of 1935.”

Christopher Slaughter

CEO

Next week, the Festival of Media gets underway in Singapore, with the theme “Agility.” Pay-TV is very much a feature of the event, with Sony Pictures Television President Steve Mosko featured in a keynote interview on Day One. The studio that brought the world Breaking Bad and The Blacklist is coming off one of its best years ever, and it’s sure to be a lively discussion. Oh, and did we mention that CASBAA members get a 10% discount with the promotional code cas10mpx?

Sara Madera

Director, Member Relations & Marketing

To hear Netflix tell it, their story is something out of a Malcolm Gladwell book, a classic David and Goliath story… plucky online upstart (Netflix) takes on pay TV giant (HBO). Headline writers love that story, but fortunately, sometimes cooler heads do prevail, even in journalism. A very good piece in Quartz this week looks at the truth behind the spin… the two companies are fundamentally quite different.

Godfrey Chan

Marketing & Member Relations Executive

Is the Hong Kong Media Industry still as free as we think? With a number of press veterans assaulted in recent years, is this evidence that there are efforts to prevent the expansion of the TV industry? “What is happening to Hong Kong?” seems to be the question now on the minds of locals and international observers.

Anjan Mitra

Executive Director, India

In case you missed the CASBAA India Forum 2014 on March 5, Disha TV India and Disha TV USA will air an hour-long special on March 16th at 2 pm – 3 pm IST on the following channels: TATA SKY (Ch. 186), Airtel Digital (Ch. 689), DD Direct Plus (Ch. 13), Dish TV (Ch. 1113), and Direc TV DTH (Ch. 2005 USA). Watch live streaming of the programme at www.dishatv.com or via the Jadoo plus IPTV Platform.

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28 February, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Feb 28th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	China is unique in the world – a place where restrictions on traditional forms of TV have given online video a huge leg up. Here’s an interesting article, with a bit of history and analysis.
Desmond Chung Associate Director, PR & Communications	Unlike the poisoned apple given to Snow White by the evil Queen, this Apple may have magical marketing powers for The Walt Disney Company. With direct linking to Apple iTunes accounts, Disney Movies Anywhere will allow consumers to buy a Disney, Marvel or Pixar movie once and watch it on any web-ready TV, mobile device or computer.
Jill Grinda Executive Vice President	OK, we have all heard that wearable technology is the next big thing…I mean how many gadgets do we tote around? A smartphone, tablet, fitness band or even a second smartphone. That’s a lot of stuff to carry. Worse, you can waste time toggling between devices and navigating the quirks of each one. For businesses, the potential of wearables is huge. Imagine having just a single hands-free gadget that you can transform into different shapes to suit your needs – to watch content, make telephone calls, check your email, engage with your customers, employees etc…et voila – here comes ‘Paddle’ …
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	It’s a bit far from our beat in Asia, but it’s interesting to watch the commentary on the Comcast/Time Warner Cable emanating from the other side of the Pacific. Here’s an amusing blog post. Having experienced the standard service of telcos/cablecos/utilities in the USA, I find this line particularly rich: Q: Will there be any adverse impact on customer service? A: A technician will be at your home between the hours of eight and never. When it comes to levels of service, we can all be happy we live in Asia.
Sara Madera Director, Member Relations & Marketing	Tivo announced results of a study showing that Generation Y is still primarily watching TV shows with viewership on the rise. But the real story is in how they are watching these shows, with Millennials choosing free ad supported online streaming services (72%) and subscription streaming services (60%), while only 40% of other generations use these services combined. Give me my shows when I want to watch them, says the newest “me” generation!

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21 February, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Feb 21st. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	Don’t miss the “Good Money Gone Bad” report, which estimates that content theft sites pushing pirated movies, music and TV programs made nearly a quarter of a billion dollars last year from advertising. You’ll be hearing more about this issue in Asia, too — CASBAA is spearheading an in-depth look at who’s paying these sites to pirate our content.
Christopher Slaughter CEO	Confession time: I’ve quit smoking at least three times in my life (this time, four years and counting). But while British television has been off cigarettes for more than 40 years, the UK has now officially fallen off the wagon by allowing e-cigarette ads. The recidivist TVC from British-American Tobacco got through by taking advantage of a legal loophole. All this, just weeks after the death from lung cancer of yet another Marlboro Man.
Desmond Chung Associate Director, PR & Communications	Is the hype surrounding social TV as the panacea for all of television’s woes been woefully overblown? A big part of Twitter’s pitch to advertisers is the audience of people who tweet while they watch TV, the so-called “second screen.” But there’s some evidence that Twitter’s audience isn’t growing as quickly as Twitter might like, especially during big TV events that advertisers like to buy.
Jill Grinda Executive Vice President	We keep hearing that wearables are the next big thing in personal technology. So what a great idea… delivering news to a wrist watch. The Sony SmartWatch 2 looks really cool and is compatible with all Android mobile phones interacting with them over Bluetooth. Euronews has just announced that it is delivering its Euronews Express app to the device to receive Breaking News Alerts so now you can watch the news on your watch…
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	The CEO of FX Networks (USA) told a conference in LA this week what we all know: legitimate content providers can’t compete with free products offered by pirates. Internet companies, he said, need to “step up and join the league of adult citizens of the business community and take some responsibility…”
Sara Madera Director, Member Relations & Marketing	The rules for showing sponsorship logos at the Olympics are tight, but snowboarders and skiers are finding their way through the minefield. By utilizing the bottom of their board (seen during flips) or the underside of the skis (held up after their run), sponsors are getting their exposure, while the athlete remains in regulation standards. Will the Olympic committee catch on or will this be the way of sponsorship for years to come?
Godfrey Chan Marketing & Member Relations Executive	Local drama producers are being inspired by foreign programmes. While new ideas and innovation are always good things, I hope this won’t result in a flood of the same kind of shows in the long run, like all the cloned variety shows and singing competitions nowadays.

Some additional links you might be interested in:

14 February, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Feb 14th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Christopher Slaughter CEO	At the risk of telling you what you already know, you might have seen that Comcast has announced that it will buy Time Warner Cable in the US. The news has prompted some predictably snarky reactions, skepticism about whether the deal will actually go through, concerns about “regulatory hurdles”, and, of course, major disappointment at Charter Communications. Even though consolidation is nothing new in the US cable industry, expect the story to remain in the headlines for some time to come.
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	In Thailand, the upstart pay-TV competitor CTH has announced a major change in direction. Recognizing the difficulties of tying together Thailand’s 300+ significant local cable networks into a single network with a single brand, CTH has changed its name, changed its partnerships, and changed its direction. CTH faces enormous challenges in monetizing its huge expense to purchase English Premier League rights for the current 3-year contract; next season it will seek new outlets for those programs on new digital FTA channels.
Jill Grinda Executive Vice President	As if the Australian multichannel TV market wasn’t crowded enough already, further disruption is in the works as Telstra is apparently planning to partner with Google to introduce Chromecast dongles into Australia this year. Telstra is aiming to get its BigPond movies, music and sports content available on the Google Chromecast dongle, opening up its TV and content services offering to a much wider audience. The hook up with Google is very interesting given that Telstra owns 50% of Foxtel, alongside News Corp.
Christopher Slaughter CEO	Hot on the heels of its record-setting year in 2013, Netflix is reportedly raising money to go after the European market, among other things. Of course, nothing attracts the spotlight quite like success, and suddenly every aspect of the company seems to be under scrutiny. But despite some criticism, there are still plenty of Netflix bulls around.
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	This online journal has a pretty good analysis of the TRAI’s recent decision restricting the business practices of content aggregation companies in India. The decision produces winners, losers and a series of unanswered questions.
Christopher Slaughter CEO	Two former BBC News executives are throwing down the gauntlet, declaring that the era of the 24-hour news channel is over. They aren’t the only ones grappling with the fundamentals; Netscape founder Marc Andreeson has been tweeting an ongoing manifesto on how to fix the news. Meanwhile, in the real world, CNN’s efforts at transformation have been getting a lot of press lately, too.
Jill Grinda Executive Vice President	What a great idea – make a set top box sexy! So sexy that it could be the reason why Comcast added more video customers than it lost last quarter. Comcast’s new set-top boxes – the X1 features a searchable cloud-based interface making it easier to navigate through hundreds of channels and on-demand content, can be controlled by a smartphone or voice commands and includes a digital video recorder. Comcast has found that X1 users consume more on-demand content and are less likely to drop their subscriptions. ….and the X1 has even been endorsed by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings!
Godfrey Chan Marketing & Member Relations Executive	Is Facebook promoting itself as a real-time mobile social TV network that is more representative of the general population than rivals such as Twitter? Facebook has partnered with SecondSync, a leading provider of Social TV analytics solutions, in releasing an analysis of how TV drives conversation on Facebook in three countries.

Some additional links you might be interested in:

30 January, 2014

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Jan 30th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	The FIFA World Cup is still five months off, but it’s already making news. In Thailand, an administrative court judge gave preliminary views that the NBTC does not have the right to usurp FIFA’s 2005 contract with RS Broadcasting by ordering all 64 World Cup matches broadcast on free-to-air TV. Assuming the full court follows (which is usually the case), only the 22 games required by the contract will be broadcast free-to-air. In Singapore, the local press has started to notice that there’s still no agreement for carriage of the World Cup matches on any Singapore platform. The press article notes correctly that it will be ever-harder as time passes for any broadcaster to monetize World Cup broadcast rights using advertising, and so consumers will foot the bill. (Thank you, cross-carriage regime — which makes telcos unwilling to subsidize exclusive rights acquisition.)
Christopher Slaughter CEO	We didn’t put anything in last week’s News Views about Charter’s bid for Time Warner Cable in the US, because we kind of figured if you missed the story, you were either hibernating, or stuck in a cave somewhere with no Internet coverage. But the saga continues, the newest twist being a side-deal reportedly being cut between Charter and Comcast to divvy up Time Warner Cable’s assets if the sale goes through.
Sara Madera Director, Member Relations & Marketing	Even though they say technology is bringing us together, the Super Bowl doesn’t want us too close. If you are attending the big game, you won’t be able to stream plays online or via the app. The NFL has decided to block these sites becasue they suck up too much bandwidth. No small screen instant replays for Super Bowl fans, but maybe no black outs either?
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	A perceptive observer notes that Indian regulatory bodies seem to be in a hurry to pressure-cook regulations that would be better left to simmer on the back burner for a bit. Examples cited: TRAI’s insistence on a 12-minute ad limitation and MIB’s introduction of guidelines for audience measurement agencies in January, likely to produce a ratings vacuum for months, until the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) gears up to produce its own ratings.
Desmond Chung Associate Director, PR & Communications	Figure skating, especially in the US, needs a shot in the arm – or in this case, another whack on the knee. Ever since its popularity peaked during the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan fiasco, the glamorous sport of sequins and sparkles has been in a ratings death-spiral. Perhaps what the sport needs now are more skaters with bigger personalities rather than more triple salchows….and an Olympic gold probably wouldn’t hurt either!
Mandy Wu Regulatory Assistant	After trying for years to coerce Taiwan’s MSOs into speeding up cable digitization, the NCC is now offering carrots, as well as sticks. A new subsidy program is designed to speed digital rollout – useful where cable rates and packages are still so highly regulated there’s no incentive for cable operators to upgrade their analog boxes.
	CASBAA wishes you a prosperous and happy year of the horse!

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John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Desmond Chung

Associate Director, PR & Communications

Sara Madera

Director, Member Relations & Marketing

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Mandy Wu

Regulatory Assistant

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Jane Buckthought

Advertising Consultant

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Desmond Chung

Associate Director, PR & Communications

Jane Buckthought

Advertising Consultant

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Christopher Slaughter

CEO

Desmond Chung

Associate Director, PR & Communications

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Christopher Slaughter

CEO

Sara Madera

Director, Member Relations & Marketing

Jane Buckthought

Advertising Consultant

Mandy Wu

Regulatory Assistant