14 October, 2016

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Oct 14th. 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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Christopher Slaughter

CEO

CASBAA shares its deepest condolences with the people of Thailand over the loss of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died Thursday at the age of 88. The King ruled Thailand for seven decades, and we join the nation in commemorating his life.

Kevin Jennings

Vice President, Programme

All television channels in Thailand — including international networks — were replaced with black and white palace broadcasts late on Thursday following the death of the King. Domestic stations switched to monochrome pictures and video of the king throughout his reign. Satellite channels — including international news networks BBC and CNN — were replaced later in the day with the same programming. A government spokesman said all TV networks were ordered to replace programmes with a prepared rolling state media programme and all broadcasters must “link to the signal from the TV Pool for the next 30 days.

Christopher Slaughter

CEO

Unless you’ve been living in a cave the past week, it’s hard to imagine that you’ve overlooked the new depths that have been plumbed in the US presidential race; but let’s consider the TV implications of the whole sordid affair. Among other industry-related aspects, it all began with a “hot” microphone (which then affected the broadcast operational aspects of the second debate), has expanded to include outtakes from “The Apprentice”, and has cost Billy Bush, the sniggering interlocutor for Trump’s “locker room” ravings, his “Today Show” job — for which he is apparently lawyering up and ready to sue. Leave aside the countless hours of talk show time this scandal has fuelled, what’s really scary is that it has also revived speculation about Trump’s post-election TV ambitions. Meantime, overseas Americans reading this — have you voted yet?

Kevin Jennings

Vice President, Programme

In a week that saw the second of the US Presidential candidate debates done and dusted, it’s fascinating to see that political smear campaigns on TV are nothing new. Here’s an historical selection of attack ads compiled by The Guardian. And a reminder that CASBAA will be featuring live coverage of the US Election results during the CASBAA Convention on November 8th.

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

Piracy roundup: Uploaders of pirated content were targeted in court actions in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Russia was thinking about levying fines on serial downloaders. From Australia, impending rumbles of a storm of site blocking that may be coming. A South African commentary observed it’s been a bad year for pirates. And one of those guys having a bad year, the guy behind the Kickass torrents website who is detained in Poland pending extradition to the USA, had his lawyers put out a statement saying Kickass was just another search engine, and “if we’re pirates, so is Google!” (Torrentfreak noted that the defunct isohunt website tried a similar tack in a civil case against content producers, but that didn’t prevent it from losing its court case.) Torrentfreak also had an interesting look at the RIAA suit against youtube-mp3, a website that helped consumers “rip” files off YouTube. Finally, in India, the government’s Copyright Office announced it would take action against……a false copyright registration site that led people to believe they were registering officially with the government. What a world….we go from pirated content to fake copyright….

Mark Lay

Vice President, Singapore

A good number of my News Views items come from the fantastic REDEF website curated by Jason Hirschhorn. Some of the best stories were from their Media Originals series by Matthew Ball. This week REDEF has released a fantastic summary of these pieces in a presentation: REDEF on the Future of Video. Well worth the download. Some prize quotes: “The traditional bottlenecks to content production and distribution have been opened up by technology, reducing the power and value of gatekeepers and creating a new bottleneck: consumer attention.” “While first wave of OTT services succeeded through core deliver excellence, the impetus for product differentiation and content integration will only grow.” “Digital era distributors have unprecedented power because digital allows for audience aggregation and more importantly audience management at unprecedented scale.” Enjoy.

Anjan Mitra

Executive Director, India

Indian broadcast carriage regulator TRAI’s draft guidelines on setting maximum retail price for genre-wise TV channels under a complex formula (a GEC price can’t exceed Rs12, while a sports channel price has a MRP of Rs. 19, etc) hasn’t pleased everybody, understandably so, but distribution platforms mostly are a happy lot. Since the guidelines are just a draft, some amendments could be expected. TRAI seems to be doing a balancing act by setting quality of service regulations for distributions platforms too. Regulatory suggestions on inter-connect agreements later may also iron out revenue sharing formula amongst stakeholders. But then some Asian experiences have shown that regulating prices could be a slippery slope.

Kevin Jennings

Vice President, Programme

Following on from a story we covered last week, the Pakistani regulator PEMRA continues to flex its muscle after it announced that it intended to ban Indian DTH services in the country. It is now illegal to own an Indian DTH service and anyone found selling or using the service could face prosecution. PEMRA has now specified how stringent the punishment for those using Indian DTH for commercial or personal use. The electronic media watchdog will impose a fine of up to Rs. 10 Million (approx US$95,000) with a possible jail term of 4 years. The banning deadline Indian DTH is set for this weekend, 15th October.

Christopher Slaughter

CEO

In these troubled times of cord-cutting, it certainly doesn’t help when a mainstream publication like the New York Times publishes “…a definitive guide” on how to end a pay TV subscription. Or when media mogul Barry Diller says that for established players, he doesn’t think “…there’s anything more than survival.” But there is some cold comfort to be found in news that some US cord-cutters are going further and also dropping their fixed-line broadband Internet connections in favour of wireless data plans. Likewise, it’s hard not to feel a certain schadenfreude when you read critics bashing Netflix for shrinking its content library.

Kevin Jennings

Vice President, Programme

In a ground-breaking move by Australia’s free-to-air television, the networks have announced they will launch a joint streaming app next month. Freeview FV will offer live mobile streaming of more than 15 FTA channels as well as catch-up content in an initiative that industry group Freeview says is a world first. It is seen as a response to declining viewership figures and the related advertising dollars. The new app is in addition to the individual catch-up live streaming services already offered by the individual commercial channels, as well as the ABC’s iView app. It’s is a big win for NRL fans who will be able to watch games for free on mobile phones from 2018 but the news is not so good for cricket or AFL lovers as Cricket Australia holds the digital rights for both Big Bash League and international matches while Telstra is in charge of the streaming rights for the AFL.

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

There’s a lot of hype about 5G mobile broadband. And it’s surely coming. The European Commission is determined that Europe should regain a leading role in this mobile tech (as it had with GSM, a couple of decades ago). The FCC is trying to push through spectrum allocations to benefit the US 5G industry. But some of that spectrum is already being used by satellites; the satellite industry says that higher frequencies should be used instead, and satellites should be integrated with other networks for 5G benefits to be enjoyed all across national territories. So 5G standards should be designed to incorporate satellites, especially for coverage of non-urban areas. Meanwhile, TelecomAsia’s John Tanner writes that progress on 5G may not be as rapid as some advocates would like. And looking at the very modest 5G predictions, alongside the huge numbers of people using current technologies, Tanner says that LTE (4G) will be the backbone of Asia’s mobile communications for a long time to come.

Kevin Jennings

Vice President, Programme

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has instructed the country’s internet service providers to immediately suspend IPTV and video-on-demand services, with the regulator threatening legal action against ISPs that do not follow the directive. Currently there are no official guidelines for IPTV and VOD services in Bangladesh but the BTRC have said that ISPs are breaching their licence agreement. According to some reports the BTRC is also in the process of developing its own triple play service which will provide IPTV and video-on-demand services. Meanwhile the state-owned Bangladesh Telecommunications seemed surprised by the suspension, after also investing heavily to develop a triple play service.

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