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Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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| Okay, it’s a bit confusing. Either the AT&T bid for Time Warner is in serious trouble because of the US Department of Justice, or the deal is perfectly fine and just going through some bumps in the road. There is definitely opposition to the deal from both sides of the political spectrum, but the biggest question mark is Makrin Delrahim, appointed head of the DoJ’s Antitrust Division just over a month ago. At this point, the deal could go either way, it seems, and in the meantime, the uncertainty is definitely making itself felt in both companies’ share prices. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| Lots of reports about piracy numbers lately. Simon Murray, of Digital TV Research, came up with a projection that the value of global film and video piracy by 2020 would be something like $52 billion. Then security firm Sandvine reported that 6.5% of US households are regular users of pirate streaming TV services. You have to treat all such numbers with skepticism, and look at how they are derived. The Digital TV Research number somehow includes the value of films and TV series (really? How did they tote up those pirated Korean series, across so many Asian markets?) but not sports! And not Pay-TV channels! So despite the press headlines it’s not much of a global TV piracy number. And the Sandvine numbers are a) derived from “multiple Tier 1 access networks” in the USA, without saying what percentage of the country is really covered b) cover only a list of named piracy services, without specifying which ones they are, and c) cover only paid-subscription pirate sites. Well, my view is that all these numbers wayyy understate the problem (see Hugh Stephen’s comment a few months ago). That said, understanding the weaknesses of the data coverage is not to criticise the authors’ efforts – piracy is such a huge phenomenon that any shedding of light is useful.
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Clare Bloomfield
Director, Policy & Research
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| A focus this week on revenue streams with mixed views on the impact of OTT. In the UK, the BBC Director General will say in a speech that the future of British-made television is under threat due to a combination of increasing OTT competition and decreasing advertising revenues, whilst Moody’s have issued a positive outlook for cable companies suggesting that cash flow in the cable industry will rise at a rate of 6% as broadband increases are expected to outpace cord-cutting by a 2:1 margin. Whilst the BBC fear that OTT content will significantly challenge the UK television market by making internationally appealing shows, elsewhere there is evidence that OTT providers are focusing more and more on providing regional content, at least in India.
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| For those of us struggling with new marketing buzzwords check out the latest piece from Samuel Scott who has taken it upon himself to help everyone out with a few tongue in cheek explanations. Definitions for “Millennial” and “Silo” are personal favourites but the article does highlight just how much has changed and as Samuel says, “we might as well throw away our copies of Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing and ignore all of David Ogilvy’s advice”. Coincidentally Samuel Scott is speaking at the CASBAA Convention next week in Macau and will give us food for thought with his piece called TV Is Not Dying. Still not registered as a delegate? Tsk, Tsk! You can make a plan here
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| When I went to Taipei in March of 2014 to make a presentation to the Taipei Association of Advertising Agencies (TAAA) about the problem of advertising industry support for piracy websites, I was greeting with polite questions, but complete inaction. Now, I see that the TAAA and a local association of content industries have agreed on an MoU to operate an Infringing Website List to avoid legitimate ads propping up pirate websites. Notice that the announcement of the accord popped up in the Taiwan government’s official IP website, which also said that the Taiwan IP Office “facilitated” the accord. This is a good demonstration of the vital role that governments have to play, in pressing local industries to stop playing footsie with the pirates. We don’t know the details, nor how effective it will be, but the fact that the ad industry has been persuaded to sign up in yet another Asian market (after Vietnam, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia) is a very good sign. But…..forgive me for asking….where is Singapore in all this?
Oh, and kudos to the folks at Star India for developing what must be great content – their channel Star Plus was reported by Sandvine to be the most-viewed channel on paid-subscription pirate boxes in the US and Canada. Right up there with Game of Thrones and Floyd Mayweather’s fights.
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| Record number of stories this week in the CASBAA OTT Group Newsfeed with a few key ones highlighted here. Fox+ launches in Hong Kong both as a standalone app and on the Now TV Pay-TV platform. Speaking in an Advertising Week session, HBO’s Richard Plepler On OTT Strategy: “We Were More Right Than We Imagined”. Discovery Communications chief David Zaslav opened up on his quarterly conference call this week indicating he may be open to cozying up with the Facebooks and Amazons of the world. Worldscreen has a big article on Pay-TV in Asia with a handful of CASBAA programmer members quoted. Funny how OTT was only mentioned a couple times. Can the Emmy’s be a leading indicator for the Pay-TV business? Maybe a few things to learn by looking inside Hulu’s growing ad-sales research team. And to finish off, the app isation of OTT TV through the “Skip Intro” button….saves me minutes per week! You know, I’m starting to think that his OTT thing may not just be a passing trend.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| And now for the weekly Kodi news: The Kodi universe continues to be torn by factionalism, with Kodi itself stressing they want their software to be used for LEGAL streaming, and the pirates at TVAddons complaining that Kodi is working with legit software developers to plant “spyware” on people’s boxes that displays warnings if they are streaming pirate programming. (The pirate add-ons come from…..you guessed it…..TVAddons.) And the tech press in the USA has finally awakened to the Kodi phenomenon, even as in Europe the tekkies are discovering the meaning of the EU court decision in the Filmspeler case: websites providing knowing access to pirate links are guilty of facilitating infringement, even if they don’t house the content themselves. Meanwhile, it doesn’t seem to have been Kodi-linked, but a guy in Bristol, UK was fined 16,000 pounds for stealing sports programming from Sky and streaming it online, through a “piracy blog”.
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| For those of you not making it to Beijing this weekend to watch the League of Legends’ World Championship at the Bird’s Nest Stadium, you can hear all about it at the CASBAA Convention. I’ll be spending some time with Riot Games’ Philip So on the main stage going through all that we need to know about eSports. For now, you can read about the battle taking place Saturday. Will it be SK Telecom T1 or Samsung Galaxy taking home the over $1 million in prize money. Catchy team names, BTW.
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