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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| So how can we NOT write about the televised trainwreck that the US President-elect’s first news conference in 168 days became this week? (In case you missed it, it’s here in full.) Theatre of the absurd, anyone? Regardless of whether you think that by releasing the dossier in question, Buzzfeed was absolutely in the right and even performed a public service, or whether you feel they crossed the line and sidestepped basic journalistic principles and were not actually engaging in journalism at all, there’s no question that CNN has paid the price. Although the network first broke the news, they didn’t go into lurid detail about what it contained, but that didn’t seem to matter. Among the lessons learned, perhaps, is that not only do news organisations need to figure out a new strategy to deal with this Administration, but they also need to stick together. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| Actually, there are two plots to the storyline of TVB giving up its Hong Kong pay-TV license. One is the piracy story; the channel pointed out that its content is widely available online in HK for free, and HK’s antiquated copyright laws don’t provide protection against unauthorized online distribution. The other story, however, is about regulatory arbitrage. TVB has not abandoned pay-TV; its myTV SUPER service is reported to have 2 million connections – far more than TVB Pay Vision ever had. But myTV SUPER is an OTT service, meaning it is virtually totally unregulated. One of HK’s legislators was quoted in the press making a key point: a pay-TV license comes with rules and regulations and burdens. An OTT service does not; in HK it doesn’t even require a license. TVB decided to serve its audience by putting its investment dollars where the compliance burdens are less. That is no surprise, and there is a real lesson here for Asian governments: if regulatory asymmetries are distorting investment decisions even in Hong Kong’s notoriously light-touch environment, what kind of incentives are heavy-regulation governments offering investors? And how long will it be before other Asian markets see disinvestment, because of those incentives? I think the canary in the mineshaft just died.
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple Inc. is planning to build a significant new business in original television shows and movies. (L.A. Times take on it.) This comes 10 years after the launch of Apple TV, (same day as that other little product of Apple’s, the iPhone, was launched). It’s nice that they have finally (maybe) figured out what to do with Apple TV, as their earlier attempts at skinny bundles never really came to fruition. Though, this original programming push may have a lot more to do with taking market share from Spotify than unseating the existing video streaming giants. |
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| The annual rite that is the Television Critics Association winter press tour has been underway in Pasadena this week, amidst anticipated kvetching about the lack of network suits onstage to take questions. Apart from FX chief Jon Landgraf, that is, who warns that “peak TV” hasn’t quite peaked yet. But hey, director David Lynch dropped in to make cryptic statements about “Twin Peaks”, another 90s phenom “The X Files” is getting another instalment, and “Scandal” is going to be quite different in Season 6. The tour continues through next Wednesday, so look for more headlines — but expect them to be about the shows, not the business. |
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President, Programme
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There’s good news, and bad news, from South Korea. The Korean government says it is going to deregulate the domestic pay-TV industry and apply the same rules to cable, satellite and IPTV. But it’s not at all clear whether any or all of the rules will apply to OTT TV. Koreans are watching more and more OTT video (a government survey found 27% of people said they watched TV online last year, up from 14 percent the previous year). But they don’t want to pay, and it is the free services that are reaping the eyeballs. So major Korean
content companies are rolling out free OTT services to compete. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| Judicial proceedings are under way in India that are crucial to the future of the industry there. Since roughly 2004, India has had extensive and very restrictive of rate regulations on supply of TV packages to consumers. TRAI has been preparing new regs that would expand the rate regulation framework, making it more applicable to digital packages AND extending detailed regulation to wholesale contracts between channels and network operators! (Unlike most governments, India holds that content carriage relationships are “interconnections,” governed by telecom-industry principles.) To the great joy of broadcasters, the Madras High Court stayed the introduction of the new regs, and is to consider beginning next week the substantive case that the extensive and restrictive regulations would violate content owners’ right (guaranteed by copyright treaties and India’s own laws) to determine their own conditions of sale. Meanwhile, no regulator likes to see its authority challenged, so TRAI is trying to get the Supreme Court to overturn the Madras court’s stay. Stay tuned…this one is important.
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| Facebook has been making some changes lately, reportedly getting ready to introduce mid-roll advertising to videos it serves up, borrowing a page from YouTube’s playbook. It has also hired former TV journalist Campbell Brown to address the “fake news” brush it’s been tarred with; which may or may not actually turn out to work, since she brings a fair bit of baggage with her to the role. Oh, and apparently, the company is also working on reading users’ brain waves to send posts — really, you can’t make this stuff up. |
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| A few more interesting stories in the world of streaming video this week. Amazon is rolling out its first branded on-demand subscription service for Amazon Channels: Anime Strike. This is significant as it’s the second Amazon OTT “channel”, other than Amazon Prime. More to come? Backchannel has a thorough story about How Netflix Lost Big to Amazon in India…though the game is nowhere near to being over yet. And if viewers don’t already have enough choice for video viewing, Facebook just launched their Facebook Live Map. Brings a whole new meaning to Bruce Springsteen’s “57 Channels (And Nothin’ On)”.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| US cable company and ISP Cox Communications has made itself the center of a real legal storm, about what ISPs have to do in order to qualify for “safe harbor” treatment. Most big US ISPs are part of the “Copyright Alert System” which provides for warnings and sanctions against repeat-offender customers who are tracked downloading pirate content. Cox refused to join that system, saying that “only courts can decide if someone is an infringer.” A federal court whacked the ISP with a $25 million judgement; the company is appealing now and – no surprise – the entire copyright industry has joined the case, urging the judges not to let the company get away with evading its responsibilities. The case may end up in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, UK ISPs are about to implement a slightly “softer” system of notices to consumers whose accounts are used for illegal downloads.
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| BBC Director General Tony Hall has set an ambitious goal — to make the BBC iPlayer the top UK streaming service by 2020. In order to achieve this, the service is likely to require a complete reinvention, “…to make the leap from a catch-up service to a must-visit destination in its own right.” Among the features that need to be incorporated into the iPlayer are personalisation, AI, and voice recognition, along with broader and downloadable content. Lord Hall’s comments came as the BBC kicked off the start of its latest 11-year charter, an accomplishment that took much of his three year tenure as DG to achieve.
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