Chang Long Jong

November 20, 2009 World Screen
In the tech-savvy, mature media market of Singapore, MediaCorp remains a dominant force. With its wide portfolio of channels, the broadcaster has been catering to the island nation’s diverse Malay, Chinese, Indian and expat communities with a mix of locally developed and imported content. As deputy CEO, Chang Long Jong oversees all of MediaCorp’s television assets, including its recently restructured production business. He speaks to TV Asia Pacific about delivering quality content, embracing new technologies and positioning the company for the future.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: How do you serve diverse audiences with your channels?
CHANG: MediaCorp operates seven television channels. Broadly speaking, the English-language Ch­an­­nel 5 and the Chinese-language Channels 8 and U cater to mainstream viewers, and they collectively serve a majority of the tele­vision viewing audience. Each of these channels have their unique market positioning; Channel 8 caters to the majority of the Mandarin-speaking community, or what we term locally as the “heartlanders.” These “heartlanders” have an immediate affinity with local programs, and the channel attracts audiences with its large offering of local dramas, variety, game shows and magazine programs. The other Chinese channel, Channel U, differentiates itself with its more international mix of programs that attract the younger Singaporean, as well as Sing­apore’s burgeoning population of first-generation Chinese immigrants. Channel U positions itself as offering the best from Asia (Korea, Taiwan, China and Hong Kong), and in line with the lifestyles of its younger audience, its programs offer a greater level of online interactivity and engagement. Channel 5 serves the most multiracial audience, and it offers a good balance of local and acquired programs, including drama, variety and reality.
 
Our new English-language channel okto, which was launched February last year, focuses on kids. Its daytime programming, which is a mix of local and acquired shows, commands 80 percent of the 4-to-12 market in Singapore. By night, the channel offers acquired documentary, factual, cultural programs for adults.
 
Our community channels Suria and Vasantham serve the local Malay and Indian community, respectively, with both local and acquired titles. Our news channel, Channel NewsAsia, serves the business community with news, current affairs and documentaries.
Results from the just-released Nielsen Media Index show that our channels continue to engage audiences despite the increasingly competitive landscape; on a weekly basis, MediaCorp’s channels reach more than 93 percent of the population.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: How has the Singaporean TV ad market held up in the current economy?
CHANG: Just like many other industries, the TV ad market was not spared by the downturn. The first half of the year was challenging; we registered a negative growth for ads. However, we had in place measures to manage costs. These measures, together with government initiatives to aid businesses, helped us stay on target, without needing to resort to drastic measures. The second half of the year has seen signs of recovery since July and August; the ad market is slowly but surely recovering, and we hope for a strong last quarter with the year-end festivities.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: What role does local content play on the schedules?
CHANG: Local content plays a critical role for us; it is the key differentiating factor against pay-TV channels.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: You also import a lot of programming from the international market.
CHANG: Channel U’s proposition is to offer the best selection in Asia, and this strategy has proven successful, given the good performance of acquired content. For Channel 5, one of its rating drivers is U.S. movies, and its Blockbuster Sunday time belt consistently performs well. Channel 5 also brings in the latest U.S. series, such as FlashForward, Fringe and The Mentalist. And while the reality genre may be losing its appeal in the U.S., we still have faithful followers of series such as America’s Next Top Model, America’s Got Talent and American Idol.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: Singapore is a very mature market technologically. Are you delivering additional content online or on mobiles?
CHANG: For the new generation of net-savvy TV viewers, we enhance our engagement with them via online-only offerings such as exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, blogging and forums. An example is our local travelogue Adventure Clicks, on Channel U. In their quest to produce a travelogue with a difference, the producers started a website to recruit three “travelers” to embark on a travelogue. Viewers were then involved in voting on the travelers’ destination and suggesting places to go within the different cities. Once the travelers started on their journeys, they blogged about their experiences, getting the audience to share their experiences in real time. Armed with tips and recommendations from their followers, the travelers then visited places of interest as recommended by the viewers.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: You recently restructured your production business. Why was that important?
CHANG: We consolidated our international production unit to come under the umbrella of Caldecott Productions Inter­national (CPI) to exploit opportunities to develop content for the regional and international markets. CPI is driven by two main thrusts—developing the entertainment and the factual genres. In the entertainment genre, we want to develop variety, game shows and dramas that will do well regionally. One such example is our exclusive agreement with Just For Laughs (JFL) to co-produce and distribute JFL gags for the Asian market. We have in the pipeline game formats with Japanese and American partners. For the factual genre, we will continue to produce award-winning documentaries from Asia, by Asians, for the global market. Needless to say, the consolidation focused our international production strategy and helped us leverage the strengths of the producers, as well as create better synergy and productivity.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: What is your strategy for exploiting your library of content outside of Singapore?
CHANG: We have achieved considerable success in exporting our Chinese content, especially our drama serials. We are actively distributing to China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia, and making inroads in distribution to North America.
Right now, we are looking to launch our own branded channels overseas, which exploits the long-tail strategy of appealing to niche audiences in the worldwide market. Plans are in place to launch a drama channel next year in North America, and an entertainment channel is in the pipeline.
 
Following the success of our time-belt management for Media Prima in Malaysia, we have launched a [programming block] in the Philippines on TV5; it is the first time a Filipino free-to-air channel has dedicated a time belt for foreign content. All content will be dubbed in Tagalog, and 520 hours of MediaCorp content has been scheduled in the first year of this collaboration.
With the centralization of our distribution unit, which sells all MediaCorp-produced content, we have been able to explore a lot more opportunities. We have begun looking to the North American, European and Middle Eastern markets. A new area of success and opportunity for us is in the kids’ genre; we have distributed to Astro in Malaysia, and are working on further collaboration and distribution in Malaysia.
 
Another [platform] that is delivering our content to the worldwide market is the Internet. Although the opening up of the online channel has brought its threats, it also offers an opportunity for us as content producers. We have syndicated our content to partners such as Baidu in China.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: What other kinds of international opportunities are you pursuing?
CHANG: We are looking at market-specific co-productions. Currently, we have a team that is developing content specifically for China and Malaysia. We want to continue to explore this strategy in other markets regionally.
 
Another area that has been opened up to us is the formation of the SMART Alliance, which is [made up of] six regional broadcasters: ABS-CBN (Philippines), BBTV (Thailand), International Media Corporation (Vietnam), Media Nusantara Citra (Indonesia), Media Prima (Malaysia) and MediaCorp. We are working with alliance members to develop co-productions of formats that will interest all the six markets. We hope that this will bear fruit next year, in the form of a game format or a reality program.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: Sports has been a big story these last few months with StarHub losing English Premier League rights to mioTV. What role does sports play on your schedule?
CHANG: In terms of big-ticket sports telecasts such as the English Premier League, the high cost of acquiring broadcast rights effectively means that they will be in the hands of pay-TV operators. But that doesn’t mean we do not do sports at all. We were one of the first few in the world to offer a full high-definition channel for last year’s Beijing Olympics. We also play a national role in ensuring that major sports events that are directly relevant to Singaporean viewers—especially when Singapore is represented in the games—are broadcast.
 
There has been a high level of interest in next year’s World Cup, and we are working on bringing in the final few matches live.
 
TV ASIA PACIFIC: What are your main goals for Media­Corp’s TV businesses in 2010 and beyond?
CHANG: To ensure we recover in tandem with the economy and be well-positioned to embark on the next level of growth. As always, we will strive to be relevant to Singaporeans and find new ways to reach, entertain and enrich their lives. In line with our vision of becoming Asia’s top media company, we want to grow our business beyond Singapore, be it in distribution, time-belt management or content production.
 
A major development in Singapore which will have a big impact on us will be the launch of our national Next Generation Broadband Network (NGBN). Needless to say, the NGBN infrastructure will open up new windows of opportunity for us, and we are watching its development with a close eye to see how we can offer new services and create a greater level of enhancement and interactivity with our consumers.    

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