New Media Conundrum

December 5, 2011 World Screen Columns

 

As CASBAA kicked off in Hong Kong in October, one thing was clear; media companies operating across the Asia Pacific are grappling with the same multiplatform, TV everywhere concerns as their counterparts in the rest of the world.
 
In the region’s most developed markets, channels and platforms are coming to grips with how to offer content to consumers wherever they are. Authentication, apps, securing nonlinear rights and fighting the ever-present concern of piracy were very much on the table over the course of the conference for Asia’s multichannel players.
 
For platforms and channels alike, the biggest issue has been negotiations with content owners for rights that extend beyond a linear play, an issue that will likely be discussed at Singapore’s Sands Expo & Convention Center as buyers and sellers gather at the Asia TV Forum. Beyond the matter of negotiating fair value for online and mobile rights, content owners are rightly concerned about piracy in a part of the world where it has been difficult, at times, to convince consumers to pay for television programming. Indeed, multichannel penetration rates are still woefully low in many Asia-Pacific territories. To drive pay-TV penetration, and advertising, channels and operators are insisting on first-run, exclusive rights, and are increasingly eager to pick up shows for online distribution.
 
FOX International Channels (FIC) is anxious for an early mover advantage in the arena of online video players, launching an authenticated service for subscribers to its Fox Movies Premium channel in 2012. ESPN STAR Sports has also unveiled an online player, and HBO Asia is reportedly set to bring HBO GO to the region next year. The theory is that by providing an easy-to-use platform for content through a cable or DTH operator, users will be less likely to seek that content out illegally. Similarly, channels across the region want to air imported content within weeks of the initial U.S. or U.K. broadcast, again to prevent viewers from finding that content on a pirate site.
 
As I write this column on a 16-hour flight from Hong Kong to New York, I can see one of my fellow passengers watching bootlegged copies of The CW and ABC shows, with Mandarin subtitles, on his iPad. Would he have downloaded those shows from a legitimate site had he been able to? As of now, iTunes Stores across Asia only allow users to download apps, not content. Netflix is currently focusing its international expansion efforts on Latin America and Europe; there’s no word yet from the over-the-top television service about plans for the Asia Pacific. Hulu, eyeing the high broadband penetration rates in Asia, has already rolled out in Japan with a subscription service. It is unclear how the platform will fare, though, given that pay-TV penetration in Japan still stands at just 23 percent, with platforms having been unable to crack the dominance held by the free-to-air terrestrials. It will be incumbent upon Hulu to secure access to content that consumers will actually want to pay for.
 
Despite the challenges ahead, channels, free and pay, appear to be optimistic about taking advantage of all these new technologies to reach audiences wherever they are. Ultimately, though, linear television is still the driving force in the Asia Pacific, and indications are that it’s a healthy market. Ward Platt, the president of FOX International Channels for the Asia Pacific and Middle East, told me in an interview for this issue about the opportunities still available across the region, from driving advertising gains at its BS channel in Japan to the potential of the premium channel market.
 
Distributors, meanwhile, are upbeat about the increased demand for content from channels and operators region-wide. Ian Hogg, CEO of Fremantle-Media Asia Pacific, is seeing a greater uptake of international concepts from channels eager to up their local programming output, as he reveals in this issue. Also in this edition, we speak to Malaysian culture secretary general Dato’ Sri Kamaruddin Siaraf about how that country is positioning itself as a content creator and exporter on a global stage. This issue of TV Asia Pacific also looks at how companies from around the world plan to increase their sales of kids’ programs to Asian broadcasters at the ATF. Also on site in Singapore will be a number of Latin American distributors who are offering up much more than novelas as they work to expand their presence in this part of the world.
 
Whatever the genre, the challenge for the content business is figuring out appropriate windows across platforms and the valuation of nonlinear rights. And while executives in the Asia Pacific will certainly look to models that have worked in the West, all eyes will no doubt be on how consumers in highly penetrated broadband markets like Japan, Korea and Singapore embrace new-media-distribution models. As Richard Li, the founder of STAR TV and now TV, said in accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award at CASBAA, “This is an exciting era for our industry. Asia has a global importance that has not been seen for centuries.”