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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| More than 30 operators are already confirmed to attend the CASBAA Convention being staged at Studio City in Macau next month. Mainstage speakers include Henry Tan, COO, Astro; Janice Lee, Managing Director, PCCW Media Group; and Birathon Kasemsri Na Ayudhaya, Chief Content & Media Officer, True Corporation. If you haven’t yet registered please click here for more information and delegate registration details.
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| Bad week for Goobook: Martin Sorrell made headlines in India, saying that Facebook and Google should stop pretending to be tech companies. They are media companies, he said and should take responsibility for the content they serve up. And three US senators made headlines there, proposing legislation that would oblige the internet giants to “follow the same standards for political advertising that broadcast television and radio stations in the America have followed for decades.” |
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Clare Bloomfield
Director, Policy & Research
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| And staying with Goobook, in the UK the government is revisiting the legal status of sites such as Google, Facebook, etc in the ongoing battle against copyright infringement and the spread of extremist material online. These organisations are currently, for legislation purposes, classed as conduits of information which means they have limited responsibility for their content. But if they were treated as publishers this would invoke more regulation. No decisions yet made but it opens an interesting debate on how best to treat them without impacting on civil liberties and freedom of speech. |
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| Elsewhere, it was predictably a full house at the Facebook presentation at MIPCOM this week. Content and the Facebook Watch platform were front and centre. It was all about content – and they are producing a lot of it… But somehow it still seems mixed messaging – on the one hand Facebook say Watch will remain a user-driven platform with nearly 1,000 shows on the platform with the vast majority being from publishers and with content that will be community driven. From a platform base of 2 billion people, putting on a show would mean even a small piece of that number is still interesting (even enviable) and they certainly have enough money from their war chest to commission enough shows to seed growth to find a lucrative model. The end game is still advertising revenue …So shows will keep viewers engaged as long as possible. |
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Clare Bloomfield
Director, Policy & Research
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| Meanwhile in the Philippines, the government is hoping to improve the country’s reputation for having one of the slowest internet speeds in Asia Pacific. Legislation has been proposed by the NTC which would classify broadband internet as a “basic” service rather than a “value added” service. They are hoping that by introducing legislation they will have the ability to force telecom companies to provide increasing internet connection speeds to its citizens. This should result in the internet connection speed going up from its current 4.5 Mbps, although it may take a while to get close to South Korea’s 26.1 Mbps. |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| With 24 DTT operators licensed in Thailand, after a brutal license bidding process (that was great at raising revenues for the Treasury but horrible for the industry) and the rapid shift of advertising to online platforms, the TV operators have been bleeding. They’ve had various kinds of support from the NBTC, but they weren’t getting all they wanted, so this week they asked the Prime Minister to give them some goodies. He gave them the brush-off, and said go back and talk to the NBTC. The next day, the NBTC actually gave them some goodies, in the form of lower licence rates. But no word on whether they will be allowed to exit the industry if they can’t make money, which was one of their other requests. Isn’t free-to-air regulation wonderful? |
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John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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| And along that line…..there was another amusing item from Thailand: the government’s regulatory interventions (“Must Have”) mean that the next FIFA World Cup will have to be available to all TV platforms. But that reduces the TV revenue potential so much that the local Sports Authority felt it had to ask for government assistance to help the country procure the World Cup rights! If the government debases the content, it’s only fair they help pay the price, eh? |
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Kevin Jennings
Vice President
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| Back to Cannes, Snapchat has revealed more about its plans to delve deeper into the world of original programming, thanks to new partnerships with NBCUniversal and Mindy Project actor Mark Duplass and his actor brother Jay, who will work on the new formats through their Donut creative studio. Snap and NBCU have previously partnered early on with its launch of the unscripted The Voice series tailored for Snapchat audiences. Now Snap and NBCUniversal have set up a JV studio and are developing and producing original content in the form of scripted shows and other genres. Meanwhile, in a separate deal Discovery teams with snap on Olympics coverage in Europe. |
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Cathryn Chase
Regulatory Assistant
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| In a landmark case, Netflix, Amazon, and several major Hollywood studios have filed a lawsuit against American ISD retailer, TickBox TV. In their complaint filed to the federal court, the founding members of the newly-formed Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) accused TickBox of inducing copyright infringement by promoting their device as a piracy tool and showing users how they can access infringing content. Although TickBox TV doesn’t technically host any infringing content, the coalition has argued that the company deliberately facilitates copyright infringement, and markets its device as a free substitute for legitimate streaming services. The complaint also demands that TickBox TV stop the sale of its set-top boxes, and that it pay statutory damages up to US$150,000 per copyright infringement. Tickbox defended itself with statements that “it is legal to stream content….Tickbox TV is 100% legal.” This case will be precedent-setting, with respect to US law. |
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Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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| I dig for the best OTT stories of the week so you don’t have to. At Mipcom, Discovery’s David Zaslav Talks Scripps, Skinny Bundles & Going Direct-To Consumer. SportsPro has an in-depth piece on sports: Live and Direct – a look across the OTT landscape. Netflix crushed the subscriber numbers again this quarter and now has 109.2 million subs worldwide…and $17 billion in content commitments. Whoa. The charts in this ZeroHedge article put a lot into perspective. And, if these commitments have you a bit worried, you will like this bear-stock porn that looks further into the cash-flow. “All of this competition is going to be great for consumers; these companies are collectively spending tens of billions of dollars to entertain us. And they’re going to lose money doing it.” But, would YOU short the stock? And to finish off, a new spectator sport for the TV superfan: ‘binge racing’. Catch even more OTT stories on the CASBAA OTT Group Newsfeed. |
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Clare Bloomfield
Director, Policy & Research
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| And in the continuing industry swell against online piracy in this region, as foreshadowed by yours truly last week, Indonesia has now launched its own infringing website list. |
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Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
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| Google, Facebook and Microsoft are among 23 major tech and media companies who have signed up to a new initiative that aims to raise standards across the digital advertising industry in the UK. Launched yesterday by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK, the trade body’s new Gold Standard initiative seeks to “address the key issues facing the industry”. Initially, these cover the need to reduce ad fraud, improve the digital advertising experience and increase brand safety, but could expand to include other issues, such as audience measurement and viewability. |
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Clare Bloomfield
Director, Policy & Research
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| Much interest in the news this week about Netflix with separate reporting on what Netflix shows are being binged the fastest and Nielsen making more data available about how many people watch Netflix programmes, which may provide a path towards a more reliable third-party ratings system for streaming services. Perhaps predictably, Netflix says Nielsen’s numbers aren’t even close. |
