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With the countdown starting to the CASBAA Convention, fast track delegate registration is still available – register now and save time instead of at the door. And a reminder that this year’s CASBAA Convention is being held at a new venue, the INTERCONTINENTAL HOTEL, Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon.
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Among the topics at the Convention, in case you wondered, will be PCCW’s plans to launch a global OTT service, called Viu OTT. The official launch is scheduled for Monday 26 October, so when I sit down with Janice Lee on Tuesday morning, there will be a lot to talk about — don’t miss it!
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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At next week’s CASBAA Convention, I’ll be doing an onstage chat with the head of India’s TRAI, R.S. Sharma, and “net neutrality” is sure to come up. Following PM Modi’s visit to Silicon Valley, this commentator descried a “lean” towards favoring digital access for more Indians (which requires big investments) over absolute neutrality. |
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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China’s online behemoth Alibaba is hungry for video, and is offering to buy out the 82% of Youku Tudou it doesn’t already own. It’s not about profits, since Youku Tudou is still losing money, instead, it’s all about the 580 million monthly unique viewers the service attracts. As readers of our report on China’s TV and Digital Video Distribution Market (CASBAA member log-in required) already know, the segment is huge, and hugely contested, so Alibaba’s offer adds an interesting dynamic to the scene. But also, it’s led a lot of Alibaba-watchers to ponder what the company’s next acquisition target will be.
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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The painful decline of pay TV platforms may not be happening like some headlines lead us to believe. "European pay TV operator Sky has posted strong results with subscribers, revenue and profit all up in the most recent quarter, despite increased competition from Netflix and other pay TV services. This is while Netflix "third-quarter profit tumbled 50 percent compared with last year, missing its forecasts as it reported worse-than-expected streaming growth in the United States.” And, Yahoo "took a $42 million write-down in its video division during the third quarter… CFO Ken Goldman later explained that Community, Sin City Saints and Other Space were to blame, noting that Yahoo ‘couldn’t see a way to make money over time.’ “ What is Sky doing so right?
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Let’s see… although we pretty much know what Netflix is planning in the region, there are still rumours about how it will enter China. Meanwhile, we’ve seen Amazon roll out Prime Video in Japan, but International first-mover Hulu says it’s not planning on coming to the party any time soon. Hulu flogged its Japan business to Nippon Television in early 2014, and since then has remained US-focused. Which sort of sounds like they don’t give much credence to a recent report indicating Asia will become the 2nd largest VOD market by 2020.
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Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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At a time when India is witnessing a social churning at various levels, self regulatory mechanism Broadcast Content Complaint Council (BCCC)’s latest report is not only revealing, but also indicative of trends in a way. The report states there’s an increase in number of complaints relating to portrayal of persons with disabilities, child marriage, abuse or exploitation, stereotyping of women, airing of content offensive to public feeling, etc. In 2012 a similar report had highlighted 47 per cent of complaints related to sex, obscenity and nudity. Draw your own conclusions, readers. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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The Kim Dotcom soap opera continues. The pirate-in-chief has been stalling his extradition hearings as long as he can, causing proceedings to be postponed 10 times (and counting). Last week, he didn’t show up in court because his back was bothering him. But the NZ prosecutors and judge are getting a little testy; the judge growled that “This is an important case. It needs to be gotten to the end of." But the best part of the last hearing was when the prosecutor read out in open court some of the evidence – seized emails and Skype logs. One of the conspirators mused they wouldn’t want to boot high-yielding pirates off their site even if they were blatant infringers, because “growth is mainly based on infringement anyway :)” The prosecutor commented about “the incredible spectacle of processing take-down notices while at the same time paying many of those same repeat offenders.” Indeed.
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Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
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YouTube has finally launched its new paid-subscription service that will be ad-free. The new service, called YouTube Red, will offer commercial-free access for $US9.99 a month starting on October 28, initially only in the United States. The traditional YouTube site backed by commercials will remain available and free.
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Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
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A recent study has found that video ads placed on content streaming websites are far more effective than pre-roll ads on sites such as YouTube. In a white paper called The programmatic living room, the software company for programmatic and brand advertising TubeMogul found that video ads on licensed content sites delivered a higher return in terms of viewability, how much of the ad is seen, and completion rate, how many of the ads are watched until the end. The report also suggests that streaming sites are an excellent medium to reach younger audiences, who increasingly see the computer as their main TV screen.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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Thailand, which was for years the land of “no regulation” when it came to TV, is now the land of crazy regulation. A vignette from this week: The NBTC announced that evil pay-TV operators were using (presumably buying) programs from digital FTA channels, and rebroadcasting the programs with ads intact. Horrors!!!! This meant consumers were being exposed to 12 minutes of ads per hour instead of the pay-TV limit of 6 minutes!!!! Consumers must be protected from this exploitation, thundered the NBTC. More likely the FTA licensees want the protection from competitors……
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Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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Indian media and entertainment industry has potential to log $100 billion turnover by 2025, a new CII report says optimistically. But, the promised reforms are missing, critics can counter. However, MIB junior minister at a recent Delhi media conference, for the first time, publicly stated government’s moving ahead on proposal of hiking FDI in news sector for TV and print. Let’s wait and Zee (as in see).
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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The Wall Street Journal had their Digital Live conference this week. Ex-Yahoo board member / ex-MTV COO, Michael Wolf, gave a presentation on the future of media: The 9 most important insights for tech and media in 2016. If 136 pages of deck is too much to chew through before your Friday night cocktail, jump to slide 58 for “The Long Awaited Cord-Cutting Moment is Still Far Off”. For "There Is A ‘Cable Killer’ Coming But It Won’t Look Like You Expect", jump to slide 86. Enjoy!
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Yegee Chun
Regulatory Assistant
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Malaysian police arrested four guys who were selling Indian DTH boxes in Malaysia, in violation of that country’s laws. 120 boxes and dishes seized. Overspill boxes are a nuisance for the huge Indian DTH operators, but a big pain for pay-TV operators in other South and Southeast Asian markets. |
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Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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After years of aggressive lobbying, sometimes much to the chagrin of ordinary consumers, telcos in India have come up against worthy adversaries — Silicon Valley based infotech giants with wide interests in India. India-born Satya Nadella-led Microsoft’s announcement to offer cheap broadband services to 500,000 Indian villages by taking advantage of "white spaces" technology has made the telcos here cry foul. A Hindustani saying, loosely translated, points out every heavyweight champ does come across a heavier-weighted champ.
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