10 February, 2017

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Feb 10th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Kevin Jennings Vice President, Programme A reminder that the CASBAA OTT Summit is just around the corner and will be held in Singapore on 1st March.  Speakers include Ajit Mohan from Hotstar, Yu-Chuang Kuek from Netflix, Ravi Vora from Hooq, Simon Vella from  MPP Global; Luke Gaydon from Brightcove; Michael Greco from Vindicia and  Irdeto’s Roger Harvey.  If you haven’t yet reserved your seat download the latest programme and registration form here.

Christopher Slaughter CEO

Earnings season again, and lots of info coming out in various reporting calls: Time Warner had a good Q4, and the company is confident that the deal with AT&T will close by the end of the year.  And on a side-note, the standalone streaming service HBO Now has crossed 2 million subscribers in the US, and sees a “big untapped subscriber opportunity” in the States.

Mark Lay Vice President, Singapore

The first earnings release of Viacom under new CEO Bob Bakish have generally been seen as positive, with revenue rising 5.39 percent to $3.32 billion. More importantly Bakish outlined a Radical Revamp of Cable Operations designed to focus the conglomerate’s resources on six core channels and a decision to rebrand Spike TV as the Paramount Network in early 2018. Core channels being: Paramount Network, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., MTV, Comedy Central and BET. CNBC provides us with a great interview of Bakish outlining these turnaround plans.

Christopher Slaughter CEO

Elsewhere, 21st Century Fox reported a 27% jump in profits, driven by higher US ad sales around baseball and politics; making it “…the star of the quarter.”   Meanwhile, CEO James Murdoch dangled a direct-to-consumer carrot on his earnings call, saying that it was an option — stronger wording than his December comment that Fox was “in no hurry” to go direct-to-consumer.  Oh, and Peak TV?  Fox expects to produce more than 20,000 hours of entertainment worldwide this year.  Just sayin’…

Mark Lay Vice President, Singapore

Also releasing earnings this week was Disney, with earnings of $1.55 per share, vs expected EPS of $1.49. “Chairman and CEO Bob Iger said more deals are on the way with over-the-top providers, including pacts that could help boost penetration rates for the sports channel.”   And while he didn’t exactly clear up the succession question, Iger told analysts he was open to extending his contract, due to expire in 2018, “…if it’s in the best interests of the company.”

Christopher Slaughter CEO

And finally in our earnings review, online retail giant Amazon is touting the success of its Prime Video product; users more than doubled their consumption of digital media on the platform in 2016.  CEO Jeff Bezos described “tens of millions” of new paid members, but didn’t give specific sub numbers, so it’s hard to tell whether their overnight launch in 200 markets outside the US has paid off yet.  One thing that is clear, however, is that Amazon is going to continue to bet on original programming; investment in programming and marketing will “…continue in 2017 and likely beyond.”

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

In European piracy news:  Copyright industries want to implement piracy site blocking in Belgium, as in other EU countries – and in Ireland, too.   Italian police busted an online retransmission piracy ring.   Sweden is looking for ways to tighten up its anti-piracy enforcement, recognizing they are playing catch-up because “when most country’s copyright laws were first laid down, the Internet simply did not exist.”   Torrentfreak complains that even “weak” antipiracy measures give pirates a pain in the behind.  (I feel so bad for the poor, frustrated pirates.)   On the bad-news front, in the Czech Republic, a court let the Pirate Party off the hook, for operating a piracy linking website…..with the “reasoning” that it wasn’t a commercial enterprise, and maybe they didn’t realize it was pirated material.    Right; that’s believable.    Meanwhile, the UK police have been out knocking on doors of ad industry players involved in placing ads on pirate websites.   The policemen have a cup of tea, and then advise their hosts that their ads are supporting illegal activities.   No threats…..it’s just about awareness, y’see…..but people seem to listen more when it’s a person in blue making them aware.

Kevin Jennings Vice President, Programme

As we mentioned last week, at no other time of year are TV ads such a hot topic of conversation in the US as they are before, during and after the Super Bowl. And according to Fox, this year, the Big Game was the most-watched program in US television history.  A bold claim, but one that also acknowledges that broadcast viewing slipped for the second year in a row.  Despite that, this year’s game carried the second-heaviest ad load in Super Bowl history, with 51 minutes and 30 seconds of ads and promos in the 3 hour 47 minute game.  And while some of them were considered quite good, plenty of them were underwhelming, and some were rather divisive, giving pundits the opportunity to vent their opinions and slice and dice the TVCs every which way.

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

Last week, we noted that a UK test case was being pursued to establish clearly that sales of “fully loaded” ISD boxes are illegal.  While the case is moving through the courts, the police are remaining active; this week there were five new raids and five new arrests of sellers of “fully loaded” boxes.

Christopher Slaughter CEO

Not only has Space X returned to launch, as we mentioned a couple weeks ago, but the company is planning an aggressive schedule of launching its Falcon 9 rockets every two to three weeks this year.  In order for that pace to be met, its new launch facility in Florida needs to be up and running, but even so, there are still questions about how realistic the schedule will turn out to be.

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

Two Aussie lads are facing potential legal trouble for using Facebook Live to stream a recent boxing match.  Awww….how much damage could two blokes do?  One of them reported that 153,000 people were watching his feed.  Foxtel was trying to commercialize that event on VOD at A$59.95 – so that’s A$9.2 million worth of damage.  Just a couple of blokes having fun, eh?

Andrew Lin Regulatory Assistant

Virginia lawmakers have recently brought up the interest of passing a “Virginia Broadband Deployment Act.” However, this bill would instead limit broadband deployment , as municipalities would be prohibited to offer internet service if an existing network already provides 10Mbps download and 1Mbps upload speeds under the proposed legislation. Municipal internet advocates were unhappy with this proposed bill and it even got Google and Netflix chiming in on this issue. Due to heavy opposition, the bill has been withdrawn just hours ago.

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

Well! Two of the major Pakistan media groups, ARY and GEO, have been going at each other tooth and nail in courts in both the UK and Pakistan, and now the UK regulator has closed ARY down in that lucrative market.   The Ofcom decision to revoke the licenses for six ARY channels comes after Dubai-based ARY placed its UK company in voluntary liquidation, after a UK court entered an expensive libel judgement against it, in a suit brought by GEO owner Mir Shakil ur Rahman (MSR – also based in Dubai).  The UK high court found ARY had seriously defamed MSR in broadcasts which accused him of being “a traitor to Pakistan who had conspired with Indian intelligence agencies and the CIA to publish fabricated stories maligning Pakistan’s armed forces.”  Apparently, ARY wasn’t able to produce any evidence justifying the claims.  The judgement and channel shutdown are a first, and they are a cautionary note for “the bare-knuckled Pakistan media industry,” as the Guardian put it.   Geo had brought 18 actions in Pakistani courts, and only one in the UK – but legal processes in Pakistan rarely produce results, and the UK court sure did!