20 March, 2015

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Mar 20th. 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	After last week’s news about HBO Now launching on Apple TV, this week a Wall Street Journal report (paywall) says Apple will launch its own streaming service this autumn (no paywall). Which, of course, means the game is likely to change yet again. Now, Apple-watching is not exactly a new sport, and the Journal article (which remains unconfirmed by anyone, by the way) has set off lots of “me-too” reporting, including stories about how Apple is offering to share data with content providers to entice them to the service, speculation about whether Apple TV as-in-an-actual-Apple-TV-set will be next, and what an Apple streaming service could do for the company’s moribund iAd business.
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	“Black Box” streaming media players are the subject of an antipiracy suit in US Federal Court by Chinese TV companies TVB and CCTV (along with US DTH platform Dish TV). The TV companies sued a handful of China-based firms which manufacture and market the “TVPad” line of black boxes, which have been heavily promoted for several years in developed-country markets as a way for consumers of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese programming to get free Internet program streams.CASBAA issued a statement welcoming the suit, and decrying proliferation of “black box” streaming media players as “a huge problem for the Asian and international television industries.”
Mark Lay Vice President, Singapore	When I read about a new OTT service being announced, there always seem to be more unanswered questions than answered ones. Exactly what channels will be offered, will they be linear or will programming be on-demand and how much, will there be a catch-up window and for how long, on what devices will the service be made available, etc, etc? For Sony’s new Playstation Vue which just launched in New York City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, The Verge answers a number of questions for us and provides a great run-through of the interface.
Kevin Jennings Programme Director	Some welcome news from the Indian government in terms of clarification of policy as they reiterate that it has no plans to put a cap on the number of satellite television broadcasting channels in the country. But in the same breath Indian parliamentarians were told that permission had been withdrawn to 27 news and current affairs channels in the past three years.
Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant	India, let’s get ready to rumble ? The battle for the television viewership measurement has intensified, with Television Audience Measurement India, an equal joint venture of WPP’s Kantar and Nielsen, all ready to give the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) a fight.
Anjan Mitra Executive Director, India	Australian telco giant Telstra has announced plans to acquire Globecast Australia subject to approval from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Telstra has been positioning itself for greater regional and global activity recently with a number of strategic acquisitions, including digital video-solutions provider Ooyala last October, and telecom service provider PacNet in December, among others.
Sara Madera Director, Member Relations & Marketing	Cable TV pioneer and Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks has launched his new OTT service CuriousityStream in the US, with an international launch “…just weeks away.” The ad-free SVOD service features a mix of original and licenced content, and features both short-form and long-form factual programming. Hendricks stepped down as Discovery chairman last year, 32 years after he originally set up the company.
Christopher Slaughter CEO	If you haven’t heard any ticking coming from the US lately, that’s because the FCC has once again stopped its 180-day countdown clock on its review of both the Comcast/Time-Warner Cable deal as well as the AT&T/DirecTV deal. Both were supposed to have final decisions this month, but are being held up because of litigation from programmers, who don’t want to disclose their contract terms with the platforms. (I love the LA Times’ take on this… “Bad news for Dodgers fans.”)
John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer	Australia is seeing a big debate over media policy, with Communications Minister Turnbull having released his proposals to relax media ownership rules. Like most governments, the Aussies have broadcasting policies designed in the Stone Age of Television (last millennium, for Pete’s sake), and updates are badly needed. But anybody involved in pay-TV (or sports management) in Oz also noted that the antediluvian “antisiphoning” rules are to remain unchanged. This attracted negative attention from one well-known Australian media tycoon and as a resultthe debate got really interesting. (Politics, as the old saw goes, is nothing more than a blood sport.) Winners so far: Free-to-air TV owners. Losers: Sports leagues… and pay-TV. But Turnbull doesn’t get the last word – Prime Minister Abbott has yet to decide.
Kevin Jennings Programme Director	Lionsgate has released more details about its financing deal with China’s Hunan TV. Hunan TV is the second-most-watched broadcaster in China, and its film subsidiary will be co-financing many of Lionsgate’s films for the next three years. In addition, the two companies are exploring distribution of Hunan TV’s original programming outside China.
Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant	Marketing exploits the data of customers because humans are predictable. But we are at a crossroads in the evolution in marketing. Simon James, VP global performance analytics at SapientNitro, sharing his SXSW15 talk, explores the ethics of whether we should be using data analysis to exploit customer habits just because we can.