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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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The 7th annual Asia Pacific Operators Summit has wrapped in Bali, accompanied by a plethora of announcements from various participants. Among the announcements: a new joint venture from A+E Networks in India, the launch of BBC Player authenticated by Starhub in Singapore, Discovery unwrapped its 4K content deal in Korea, and its stake in OTT service RugbyPass, Hong Kong’s now TV let it be known it has UEFA EURO rights for 2016, Turner is bringing Warner TV and Oh!K to Indonesia, and Nickolodeon’s Kid’s Choice Awards is going on LeEco.
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Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
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The digital marketplace is at an important pivot point requiring industry-wide collaboration and commitment to ensure ongoing consumer engagement with brand messages in media, according to the annual Interaction report into digital advertising produced by GroupM. Based on insights from 45 markets around the world, highlighted six macro-trends, including ad blocking, the integrity of digital supply, mobilisation and the expansion of app use, TV's transition to over-the-top, the application of data to marketing, and the expansion of e-commerce.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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Censorship. It’s all the rage. In Bangladesh, there’s considerable concern about a new broadcast bill that will give the government “draconian” censorship powers over media outlets. Meanwhile in China, the authorities found a foreigner to praise their “family values” censorship. Amusingly, said foreigner has a Linked-In page which has itself been censored, as he belongs to a religious group that doesn’t meet with the authorities’ approval. (Read his “Chief Visionary Officer” item.) And in Thailand, a draft computer crime law will give the government more power to order removal of online content. (One can understand why this might be of greater concern than in other places — this is the same country where the Prime Minister is planning to jail online critics.) My fellow lovers of the Land of Smiles will enjoy this commentary by journalist-and-broadcaster Sutichai Yoon, entitled “Shhh….don’t tell me what you think.” He notes that the military’s laws governing campaigning on its latest constitutional referendum are so unclear that neither opponents nor proponents of the new charter can feel comfortable in speaking about it.
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Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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While we’re on the subject of censorship, have a look at this column criticizing India’s film censorship. The author says it is tempting to heap abuse on the CBFC censors, but she points out that the problem is the whole legal framework of the censorship categories, which is totally inappropriate for modern circumstances. Maybe the unreality of the system is the reason that so many films are shown on TV without passing the censors first.
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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Apple is being forced to close down its iTunes business in China only seven months after it launched. Some believe that "the closure of the iTunes movie service is less surprising than the fact that it was ever being allowed to launch.” “The Apple case is not good news for the wider entertainment industry,” says one Asian media analyst. “In the last six months we’ve seen a number of deals lose their value. As releases and broadcasts are held back, some of our clients are beginning to ask if selling to China is worthwhile.” "Apple also revealed that the Chinese government had asked for its source code and that company had refused. So the closure of iTunes Movies and iBooks could be punishment."
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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Astro’s Tribe OTT service is continuing to hop borders, launching in the Philippines in conjunction with mobile operator Globe. Tribe debuted in Indonesia last month, and will keep adding ASEAN markets going forward.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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This week saw the rollout of the latest season of Game of Thrones. Predictably, the “most pirated TV show of all time” soared to the top of the piracy charts. Down Under, the pirates were at full sail……this commentator notes that despite Foxtel dropping the price for the legitimate streams, piracy continued to soar. “Australians refused to fork out,” said the columnist. That pretty much says it all. But on the “good news” side of the ledger, the UK government (which has already demonstrated its commitment to protecting British creative industries) said they would propose making the penalties for online copyright theft the same as hard-goods infringement – up to 10 years in jail! Maybe if they did something like that in Australia the Cheap Charlies would find a reason to pay up……
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Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
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The TV industry has long argued that reports of huge audiences for Facebook and YouTube don't tell the whole story. Now a TV trade group is proposing metrics that it says would put digital on the same footing as networks for the first time. One part of the study showed far more people are more engaged for far more time with late night content on the television while YouTube serves as a complementary platform for viral clips".
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Yegee Chun
Regulatory Assistant
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Another player has joined the OTT wars this week: Fullscreen officially launched its online subscription service featuring original content from prominent YouTubers and traditional TV programming for $4.99, half the cost of YouTube Red. The talent agent-turned-online video content producer may not get much recognition, but Fullscreen is consistently within the top 3 YouTube partners and may well have plenty of reasons to out-perform YouTube Red.
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