CASBAA: Singapore Pay-TV Rules ‘Won’t Work’

SINGAPORE: The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) is maintaining its stance against Singapore’s new pay-TV policies on cross-carriage of content, arguing that they run contrary to the interests of the island nation’s subscription television market.

CASBAA issued its latest position in response to the MDA’s recent proposals regarding the implementation of the new rules, which mandate cross-carriage of channels and content on rival platforms StarHub and SingTel. According to CASBAA, incentives for content innovation will be suppressed, with particular damage to the business of producing or acquiring “marquee pay-TV programming, which by its nature is expensive to produce or acquire," the trade body said. The rules, CASBAA added, will “necessitate sustained regulatory micro-management of the pay-TV market exacerbated by interference with intellectual property rights.”
 
The association noted that the proposed rules are damaging to Singapore’s role as a regional content hub. “If implemented as they stand, the new rules would undercut the attractiveness of Singapore as a destination for media investment and impair employment and economic growth.”
 
CASBAA also said that the new rules remain inconsistent with Singapore’s international treaty obligations.
 
“Content owners, who have used Singapore as a regional base for more than 15 years, consider the new rules very harmful to the country’s reputation for protecting intellectual property rights holders,” said Simon Twiston Davies, the CEO of CASBAA. “The useful stimulus to domestic production coming from growing pay-TV could be irreparably undermined. These are regulations that will not work for Singapore and would be even more destructive in other jurisdictions."