19 May, 2017

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending May 19th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer It seems the TV industry is finally getting some traction with enforcement agencies around Asia, with respect to the syndicates selling illicit streaming devices (ISDs) and operating the piracy server networks that feed them. Last week in Bangkok, there was a police raid and several arrests of UK citizens involved in operating the Expat.TV networks. (That was a series of networks with marketing pitches aimed at expatriates living in Southeast Asian countries and Hong Kong. They specialized in stealing and reselling British programming, including Premier League matches and other sports.) A few weeks earlier, Astro and Cisco scored, with a raid by Malaysian police on a syndicate stealing Astro channels (and many others) and retransmitting them through ISDs.  One Malaysian press report said the police were “taken aback” by the size of the operation, which was reported to have 30,000 customers.

Christopher Slaughter CEO

Two apparently contradictory headlines in the trade press this week illustrate the quandary the industry finds itself in these days; on the one hand, “Pay-TV bleeds subs in worst quarter ever;” but at the same time, “Global Pay-TV subs to break billion barrier by 2018.”  So who to believe? Perhaps another perspective is needed: “TV is not dying — it’s lies, damn lies, and bad media statistics.” (Thanks, Andrew Jordan!)

Mark Lay Vice President, Singapore

A year ago, a week would go by and we may see only a couple stories about how OTT/Streaming video is changing the current landscape. Now there is a torrent of stories in all shapes, styles and sizes. PCCW’s Viu just launched in Thailand. After years, Apple and Amazon came to a deal to have Prime Video on Apple TV. Hotstar showing IPL has Indians glued to their phones for cricket. PLDT will be deploying a Roku streaming solution to deliver Cignal channels, Netflix and others.  Amazon has announced they will embed their Fire TV and Echo into the TV’s of a number of manufacturers. Pluto TV is now adding on-demand to their existing free streaming channel service. Streaming Business News Network Cheddar Raises $19 Million. MLB did a deal with Facebook to stream one game a week. Vevo is trying to take on MTV with a new tvOS app. And that’s just a few of them this week.

Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant

The sorry saga continues with Facebook admitting to its 10th measurement mistake since September.  Facebook’s mistake elicited demands from ad buyers for more third-party verification on the platform. And the collective effective of the errors is getting on buyers’ nerves. “There is a general sense of ‘what could be next,’” said Jessica Baum, media director at Traction. “Even though the last error was smaller in scope, it still impacts overall trust.”

Cathryn Chase Regulatory Assistant

The Indian news television channel Republic TV has been accused of employing unethical tactics in an effort to increase its viewership.  Following a unanimous decision by its member companies, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) lodged a formal complaint with the TRAI, charging the recently-created news channel with running multiple frequencies.  Not an uncommon strategy in the TV industry, this method involves a channel listing itself at multiple locations, in multiple genres in the EPG of various MSO platforms, resulting in the channel airing on multiple logical channel numbers at the same time.  More importantly, running multiple feeds to garner television rating points (TRPs) is a violation of TRAI rules, though which are in suspended animation at the moment, courtesy Star’s appeal in Supreme Court. The NBA also appealed to the Broadcasting Audience and Research Council of India (BARC) not to release Republic TV’s viewership data before the channel put an end to their alleged malpractices, stressing that doing so would only serve to encourage this type of misconduct in the industry. Against the wishes of the NBA, the BARC has since released its week 19 results, revealing that Republic TV has surpassed previous category leader, Times Now, as the English language news channel with the most weekly impressions.

Kevin Jennings Vice President

Chinese telcom equipment provider ZTE has announced it wants to expand its partnership in Pakistan and introduce digital television services into more regions of the country, including in remote northern mountainous areas. A company representative made the announcement at this week’s Belt & Road Forum in Beijing. Pakistan is one of the most important markets for ZTE outside China and the company has a strong legacy relationship with Pakistani telecom operators, pioneering earlier 2, 3 and 4G network launches. ZTE have promised that their 5G product will be a world beater. The Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) signed a strategic memorandum of understanding with ZTE in March  as part of a key initiative for PTCL and ZTE to provide high quality video services to customers on TV and mobile devices.

Andrew Lin Regulatory Assistant

The Tamil Nadu Film Producer’s Council (TFPC) proposed to go on a strike starting May 30 as a way to advocate the state government to take steps on combating piracy. Piracy has been a long time issue within the Tamil film industry. The recent worldwide release of Rajamouli’s film Baahubali: The Conclusion was reportedly leaked on Facebook by a group of pirate syndicates under the name of “Tamil Rockers.” However, after a discussion with Chief Minister, Edappadi K. Palaniswami, the film strike will likely be called off after the CM’s assurance and opposition against the strike among film distributors.