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.