Event Preview: CASBAA

November 3-6
Grand Hyatt, Hong Kong

The theme for the CASBAA Convention in 2008 was "All Eyes on Asia," and the media industry has certainly kept its focus on the fast-growing sector of the world, where ad revenues are expected to rebound by early 2010. This year, the annual confab for Asia’s pay-TV industry has set "Extending Your Reach" as its new slogan, delivering keynotes, panels and networking sessions so that attendees can make the most out of all the emerging opportunities in the region.

"While growth has slowed, we are seeing several new entrants to the Asia Pacific," notes Simon Twiston Davies, the CEO of the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA). "Asia is much more robust than it was in ’97," Twiston Davies continues, referring to the economic crisis that debilitated Asia’s media industry just over a decade ago. "We are much more prepared than we were. Both the domestic players and the international players received a reality check in 1997, which has, for anyone with any type of corporate memory, served us well. That is a very, very important lesson learned."

Given the generally optimistic outlook for the media business in Asia, Twiston Davies says that the attendance numbers for CASBAA next month look "extremely good," especially following the organization’s efforts to attract more pay-TV platforms to the convention.

This year, the speaker lineup includes David Haslingden, the CEO of Fox International Channels and National Geographic Channels Worldwide; Subhash Chandra, the chairman of Zee Entertainment Enterprises; Kim Williams, the CEO of FOXTEL; Ronnie Screwvala, the CEO and founder of UTV Software Communications; Hideaki Kido, the senior managing executive officer of Japan’s SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation; Mark Hollinger, the COO of Discovery Communications; and Bernhard Glock, the president of the World Federation of Advertisers.

There are also numerous panels lined up, with a key focus for the conference agenda this year being sports. Lalit Modi, the chairman and commissioner of the Indian Premier League (IPL), will discuss the lucrative cricket market in the region. Also slated to participate are Russell Wolf, the executive VP and managing director of ESPN International, and Ma Guoli, the CEO and managing director of Infront Sports & Media from China. CASBAA will also present a focus on new-media opportunities, led by opening remarks from Jeffrey Cole, the director for the Center for the Digital Future at USC Annenberg School for Communication.

The convention is just one of several initiatives organized by the CASBAA organization each year. Most recently, one of its key efforts was a road show in Indonesia, in conjunction with the country’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Depkominfo), the industry association APMI (Asosiasi Penyelenggara Multimedia Indonesia) and the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI). The aim was to address unregulated platforms that are redistributing channel signals without authorization. "There are a little more than a million subscribers in Indonesia [in a country of] 260 million people," Twiston Davies explains. "The idea was to do a big educational program [for the operators] with a mixture of government officials, industry officials and a CASBAA rep, in town hall meetings."

In the Philippines, meanwhile, CASBAA has seen some encouraging developments, with a court ruling this summer against an unlicensed cable operator. The platform is now legally bound from broadcasting pirated signals and must solely distribute authorized channel feeds to its customers.

Another problem area on the piracy front is India; Twiston Davies estimates that the net losses from subscriber under-reporting this year will top $600 million. "We remain very concerned about the level of investment into on-the-ground [cable] infrastructure. The underlying issue here is the underreporting of the number of subscribers plugged into the national cable system of 85 million homes. Part of the solution has to be digital infrastructure."

In China, meanwhile, the key concern these days is that "people are breaking the codes for worldwide encryption. That is a huge problem we are working on with various parties."