China to Dish Out Almost US$200 BILLION to Boost Internet Speeds – What’s It All About?

By CASBAA in Internet 0 Comment

SCMP reports……

China will invest more than 1.2 trillion yuan (that’s a whopping US$193 billion) to boost internet speeds and coverage across the country as it looks to move towards an economy driven by services and innovation.

The announcement follows Premier Li Keqiang’s call last week to telecoms companies to ramp up internet speeds and cut charges. Li said China is the world’s biggest mobile phone market but its information infrastructure is backward, with internet speeds ranked below 80th in the world…..
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In 6 words or less, China’s US$193 billion investment in the internet will….?

  • lead chat apps further into video?
  • make it world’s top OTT market?
  • help bring down the great firewall?

World Cup 1.0

By CASBAA in Piracy 0 Comment

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(Photo by: himanisdas)

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Matt Kurlanzik

21st Century Fox

Director, Government Relations Asia

 Yet again, the World Cup proved to be an incredible event with a one-of-a-kind ability to connect and engage with audiences across the globe.With millions of viewers watching matches online, the 2014 World Cup demonstrated the potential of live streaming content; unfortunately, the 2014 World Cup also illustrated that illegal online piracy remains a serious threat to the continued development of online video content and distribution.

Legal, legitimate options are not the silver bullet

The 2014 World Cup broke records for both traditional TV viewing and online streaming.   Due to substantial investments in online platforms, websites were able to handle the increased usage and deliver quality video, even with Internet traffic peaking at 6.87 terabytes per second.

Despite the wide range of options that World Cup viewers had, millions still turned to illegal live streams of the event.  For example, the game between Russia and Belgium drew 471,541 illegal viewers according to Viaccess-Orca, a firm specializing in live stream take down notices.

Here in Hong Kong, TVB purchased the rights to 2014 World Cup for HK$400 million (approximately US$52m) and as part of their World Cup broadcast they offered the matches “anytime, anywhere and on demand.”   TVB even offered fans a chance to watch games in state of the art 4K, which left viewers ‘over the moon.’

TVB made a strategic decision to invest in the content rights of the World Cup, but despite broadcasting games to multiple devices and offering a number of free broadcasts, many Hong Kongers still turned to illegal, pirated streams online.  In addition to these illegal Internet streams, illegal streaming devices, or “black boxes” offered unauthorized broadcasts of World Cup matches.  These illegal black boxes were detrimental to TVB’s World Cup broadcast and continue to be a threat to the TV industry in Hong Kong.

The prevalence of these unauthorized, illegal streams available online and through streaming devices illustrates that even when operators provide high-quality legal streams of content across multiple devices, piracy remains rampant.

Commercial cooperation is necessary for online video to prosper

Prior to the start of the World Cup, FIFA, the organizer and main beneficiary of the World Cup, issued a strongly worded letter that threatened pirate websites with civil and criminal liability lawsuits.  While some commented that this is “above and beyond” common takedown procedure, most companies in the online video ecosystem attempted to comply and work with FIFA.

In the United States, Google worked with World Cup rights holder ESPN and reached a deal where the search engine directed users to the ESPN website or streaming app to show licensed and authorized highlights of the game.

The financial terms of the deal between Google and ESPN were not disclosed, but whether or not ESPN had to pay Google to feature authorized video clips, it is refreshing to see this type of cooperation from Google.  It is also encouraging to see that Internet search engines can take reasonable measures to address the queries of the user while at the same time acknowledge the authorized rights holder.  This continued type of action is essential for legitimate online content to grow and thrive.

Univision, a Spanish-language channel based in the U.S., is another example of how streaming the World Cup can be a wise strategic investment.  Univision spent over US$325 million for the Spanish language rights to the 2010 and 2014 World Cup, and has continued to invest in technology to deliver the World Cup into American homes seconds faster than its competitors.  Univision also offered free streaming to American viewers on multiple devices including their PCs and cellphones.

All of these factors, and the fact that Univision reached nearly 81 million viewers, up 34% from 2010, in its World Cup broadcast caused the New York Times to call Univision the Biggest Scorer in the World Cup.

The World Cup showed that an innovative tech giant such as Google can play a helpful role in upholding content rights.  Hopefully these tech innovators will continue their commitment to protecting content rights, but their sustained cooperation remains unclear.

Social media delivers tremendous exposure and raises new questions

Social media continues to impact how we consume and interact with video content, in particular live broadcast events like the World Cup.  It should not be a great surprise, but there were record numbers of social interactions related to the 2014 World Cup, with an estimated 350 million Facebook users posting 3 billion World Cup related conversations and 672 million World Cup related tweets.

In the Final alone, 88 million Facebook users had 280 million interactions and Twitter users sent out 32.1 million tweets, or 618,725 tweets per minute.

Facebook and Twitter were not the only social media players to participate in the World Cup action.  The users of Vine, the Twitter-owned social networking service that utilizes six second video clips, promoted all types of short videos related to the World Cup.

Most operators had no issue with Vine videos showing fans celebrating or other World Cup related clips, but many Vines were showing the most dramatic game action, such as goals, free kicks and yellow cards.

The trouble with these “social media” clips and the websites that promoted them is they were not authorized to distribute these video clips.  Also, many of the rightsholders (e.g. TVB or Univision) offered programming designed to showcase these valuable highlights.  As a result, FIFA and various rightsholders requested that Vine videos with unauthorized content be taken down.

These Vine highlights further demonstrate how new digital technologies and social media services can generate exposure and promote fan interaction, but at the same time may inhibit the growth of an online video ecosystem by ignoring content rights.

Piracy continues to be an obstacle to online video innovation and distribution

From content to distribution, this is an exciting time to be involved in the online video space.  Companies are continuing to make strategic investments to capitalize on growing consumer demand for online video.

The 2014 World Cup emphasized the opportunities and challenges that currently exist in online video, and it showed that affordable, legitimate alternatives are not a panacea to piracy.

A variety of stakeholders: governments, rightsholders, distribution platforms and tech innovators, need to show a committed effort to reducing piracy to allow online video to succeed, and additional measures need to be available to remove and create disincentives for websites offering illegal, unauthorized content.  This will allow legitimate players to flourish and will encourage more investment.

The 2014 World Cup shows the potential of streaming content but plenty of work remains to ensure this potential is realized.

 

Digital, Legal and Anywhere: Innovation in Australian TV

By CASBAA in Regulatory 0 Comment

DLA-Australia

nick-binns

Matt Pollins

Olswang

Associate

 

 

 The way Australians watch TV is changing. Australian users are voting with their taps, clicks and swipes, with millions now tuning into online TV services from their laptops, tablets and smartphones.

The pace of change is rapid and unprecedented, and the key challenge for the TV industry lies in quickly adapting to new technologies and evolving viewer habits against the background of widespread piracy.

In an effort to track this rapid change, showcase the level of innovation in Australian TV and consider the challenges that remain, CASBAA recently co-published a report with law firm Olswang Asia entitled “Digital, Legal & Anywhere”. The full report is available on the CASBAA website but here are our top 3 talking points:

1. Australia is a great market for OTT

Australian viewers are generally young, tech-savvy and affluent. Technology infrastructure is improving (despite recent issues with the controversial rollout of the National Broadband Network) and Australia is a world-beater when it comes to mobile broadband penetration. It is fair to say that Australia is a market of early adopters.

2. Piracy in Australia remains a big problem

Piracy remains a huge challenge for the TV industry in Australia. Indeed, levels of piracy in Australia are high by any international standard. Although the Government is starting to take some initial steps to addressing the problem, there has so far been a lack of decisive action of the kind seen in comparable markets such as the UK.

3. A broad and growing range of OTT services exists – probably the best in Asia-Pacific

One of the key findings of the report is that Australia is now offering arguably the broadest range of legal content offerings in any market in Asia-Pacific, with a wide range of models and content types covered. In fact, new offerings were being launched almost monthly just during the period that the report was being written. To showcase the range of offerings available, a pilot “one stop shop” website is being launched at www.finddigitaltv.com.au. This “one stop shop” allows viewers to search for legal online TV services by category (e.g. kids, sports) and commercial model (e.g. free, download, subscription). This site builds on work that was done in Singapore last year and given that some of the findings between the two countries were the same (i.e. that there is still some scope to improve consumer awareness of legitimate content offerings available), one wonders whether this is a broader opportunity for the TV industry across Asia-Pacific.

Australia is definitely a market on the move and one to watch when it comes to the evolution of TV. Anyone interested to read more can download the report here.

 

APOS 2014: TV Everywhere, Business Models Somewhere

By CASBAA in TV 0 Comment

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(Photo: Armando Torrealba)

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Saugato Banerjee

A+E Networks

Vice President – Strategy and Operations, Asia Pacific

 

 

 The annual gathering of the broadcast industry, Asia Pacific Operators Summit 2014 (a MPA Conference), brought an interesting mix of broadcasters, platform owners and content producers from all over the continent. As the participants slowly work off their hangovers, what did we really take away from the thought provoking sessions over the two days? 

a. The ecosystem is truly waking up to the challenge of shifting media consumption patterns. All players in the system recognize the challenge of increasing Pay-TV penetration rates exponentially as audiences get their entertainment fix through other pipes. The good part is that the industry seems to developing a collective will to see this as an opportunity and there is a lot of experimentation underway to figure out models that best suit their own needs.

b. Platforms are increasing their investment in local content and thereby increasing controlling their own destiny across the entire value chain. As much time was spent discussing their investments in local content as was in discussing growth rates, collaborations with channel partners and the ever-increasing cost of sports rights.

c. The localization bug seems to have an infectious spirit that has also affected the international channel providers. More than one network head seemed to chant the mantra of increasing audience share and creating a deeper connect with local markets.

d. The boldest proclamation had to go to the Chairman of Shanghai Media Group who declared that the current BesTV business model would be extinct in a few years. Given that BesTV is the largest IPTV platform in China, is listed on the stock markets and is wholly owned by the Shanghai Media Group, it was a statement designed to illustrate the direction of the Chinese entertainment market. The answer seems to lie in current mantra on every player’s lips – OTT.

e. India continues to vex and encourage. More than one session did not miss an opportunity to rail against the structural and regulatory imbalances, limited opportunities to extract the true potential from the market etc. And yet with digitization already having a positive impact, a pro-reform government on the horizon and the worst of the slump seemingly behind, there was more than a hint of optimism in the air.

APOS is often a venue for a lot of deal making on the sides and plenty more social interaction within the industry. The mood this year can best be described as guarded optimism. There is clear recognition that a lot needs to change with the way the industry presents itself to the consumer in order to stay relevant. But there is also optimism stemming from the fact we are in the golden age of story telling and content consumption. And who better to take advantage of this age than those who best tell the stories?