Spotlight: Lightning International’s James Ross

Lightning International has launched a bouquet of 12 FAST channels available for Asia and worldwide. These channels are fully curated and broadcast-quality and include brands ranging from NOW 70s, NOW 80s and NOW ROCK to Action Hollywood Movies, Pet Club TV, TRACE Urban, TRACE Sport Stars, Docsville, NewsWorld and more. James Ross, CEO, shares with World Screen his views on the evolving FAST landscape.

WS: How do you see this new interest in FAST channels impacting your business in Asia and around the world?

ROSS: Consumers have lots of choice. They can stream, lean forward and pick what they want. They can lean back and watch traditional television. FAST channels are adding to that, particularly through smart TVs. We’re embracing all of that. We have been around for 12 years. In the past, we very much focused on broadcast TV and pay TV, cable, satellite and so on. In fact, we’re now part of the AsiaSat group. We continue to broadcast channels that are suitable for all types of platforms. It could be pay TV still, but these days it’s also FAST. It is giving us a bit of a lift in a different area of our business. As the advertising grows with FAST channels, that is increasingly important to all of us to balance a slight downturn in pay-TV revenues. We’re very optimistic about it. Different parts of the world are in different stages of growth with FAST. FAST has been pretty big in the U.S., and that’s been leading the market. Europe is growing, and Australia and New Zealand are growing quite well. Asia is kind of a laggard at the moment, but it is growing; there are lots of plans there, a lot of people launching channels and particularly new platforms.

WS: Give us a sense of your overall FAST channel offerings.

ROSS: At the moment, we’re offering 12 FAST channels, available in different parts of the world. They include all kinds of different genres. They are fully curated channels, and we plan them as if they are full broadcast channels; we’re not sitting on a pile of content and just playing it out one piece at a time. These are fully thought-through channels. We represent and produce. We represent, for instance, big channel brands like the Now That’s What I Call Music series, with NOW 70s, NOW 80s and NOW ROCK from Universal and bring them out into the FAST world. We also have GB News, which is one of the U.K.’s leading news channels. Action Hollywood Movies is another brand we have, which is classic movies from the ’70s and ’80s. We have Pet Club TV, which is 24/7 pets and vets. We have two documentary channels: the wonderful Docsville, which is real stories about real people from around the world and some really engaging films from some of the world’s leading filmmakers, and Pulse Documentaries, which has another take on docs from Asia and other parts of the world rather than just the Western world. We have another news channel that we are launching, NewsWorld, which is a combination of different news channels from all around the world, all brought together, all live, giving a world view of the news. We look after the TRACE channels, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, such as TRACE Urban, TRACE Latina and TRACE Sport Stars as FAST channels, and they’re doing particularly well at the moment in Australia. We also work very closely with Genius Brands [now Kartoon Studios] on Kartoon Channel!, which has some fantastic fresh animation for kids.

WS: What are your projections for the FAST channel business in Asia over the next 12 to 18 months?

ROSS: In Asia, the business is still in its infancy. There are a lot of people scratching their heads going, how do we get into the FAST channel business? If we look at pay TV, there aren’t really any pan-Asia pay-TV operators. There are lots of people that offer channels on a pan-regional basis, but no operators offering anything pan-regionally. Asia is a series of many different types of countries, populations and cultures. So, it’s done on an individual country basis. Australia and New Zealand have been doing quite well off the back of some of the Western launches of FAST platforms around the world. They have Samsung and LG, and Fetch TV and others have launched there. In Asia, a few pay-TV operators are coming through now and announcing that they are launching a FAST platform. I think in the early part of next year, we’re going to see a number of the bigger operators coming up with platforms that are more pan-regional, particularly in the world of smart TVs. Eventually we’ll see different platforms popping up pretty much in every market in the region. Japan has done quite good things in FAST, with a lot of platforms already up. Japan is also full of numerous major streaming services. So, for once, Japan has quite a bit of dynamism in the TV market, which is unusual for those of us who have been around a while; Japan was a laggard for many years, but it’s quite a dynamic environment right now. We’re going to see the next 12 to 18 months as a pretty busy period in the Asia-Pacific region and hopefully lots of opportunities for all of us.