Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Jan 30th. 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 SlaughterCEO |
The future of TV is here… ummm, well, a few different versions of the future, anyway. This week, Dish’s widely-heralded Sling TV service got a soft-launch in the US, to slightly delirious applause from cord-cutting sports lovers in particular. Meanwhile, some sneak peeks of Sony’s Playstation Vue internet TV service emerged as well, offering a slightly different take on things (minus ESPN). And just a few days before, ex-Hulu CEO Jason Kilar opened his new venture, online video service Vessel, for beta testing, with YouTube squarely in his sights. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
The satellite industry is justifiably concerned about attempts to take the C-band spectrum so vital for broadcast distribution and add it to the hoard of frequencies in the hands of the mobile telecom operators.CASBAA helps get this message out in Asia, and at a conference last week in Nigeria, the same theme was repeated for Africa. The CEO of Eutelsat told a conference in Abuja that “terrestrial operators already have access to a very broad range of spectrum and should be using this first before seeking to acquire more, particularly if this process is carried out at the expense of critical applications” such as broadcasting, he said. |
Mark LayVice President, Singapore |
On the OTT front, streaming media player ownership to hit 40% in US with the “weekly per-capita viewing of over-the-top TV sports expected to grow from just under 25 minutes in 2015 to more than four hours in 2025″, according to TDG research. And still on sports, it looks like WWE has hit their one million subscriber mark that it said it needs “to offset potential PPV revenue losses it will suffer from migrating its events to the WWE Network”. |
Kevin JenningsProgramme Director |
In an interesting turn of events now it’s a cable company offering calls instead of the telco carrying TV. The service will initially only be available in New York and offers unlimited calls for a monthly fee.
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Jane BuckthoughtAdvertising Consultant |
The rate of growth in global advertising expenditure is expected to slow to 5.1% this year before picking up again to 6.0% in 2016, according to a new forecast. However, India and China are powering ahead and will see all-media growth of 11.6% and 10.3% respectively. |
Christopher SlaughterCEO
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UK trade association PACT (the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television) represents Britain’s independent production industry, and is now setting up shop in the United States. This is the group thatsucceeded in getting the Terms of Trade changed back in 2003, to wrest control of programme IP rights away from broadcasters and give them to producers. The battle over IP rights has been going on for years in the UK, and now PACT is looking to bring that fight to the US. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
Hong Kong is a wired city, and its FTA broadcasters are being hard hit by competition from Internet TV. Hastening the process: the government’s licensing restrictions have meant that dynamic local entrepreneur Ricky Wong, rebuffed from joining the FTA industry, hasput his broadcasting on the internet instead. I guess the motto is “If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em.” Oh, and cynical me can’t refrain from pointing out that the local newspaper’s very detailed commentary on this issuemanaged to cover the whole waterfront…..without once mentioning the competition from online piracy. Blinkered view? Nahhhhhh……. |
Mark LayVice President, Singapore |
For those of you who did not attend the CASBAA Indonesia in View event in Jakarta last week, you missed Joe Welch of 21st Century Fox who gave a very entertaining presentation-cum-performance before the piracy panel where it was revealed that “gambling, pornography fuel Indonesia’s content piracy”. Also, during the sports panel, Beatrice Lee of MP & Silva announced that the company secured a 15-year rights deal with Malaysian FA. |
Kevin JenningsProgramme Director |
Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission has released new regulations governing mergers and acquisitions, cross-holdings and domination in the radio and broadcasting industry. |