22 September, 2017

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending September 22nd. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Kevin Jennings Vice President Cable operators face many challenges, but Liberty Global’s Mike Fries (and former CASBAA Convention Keynote speaker) has called out Amazon as the biggest threat to the industry. “We are standing in their way,” according to Fries, who finds it an uncomfortable thought that he does not know what Amazon’s game plan is regarding video. And forgive the plug, but talking of the CASBAA Convention, have you registered for this years event yet? Still not convinced on what Mike Fries says? See Mark’s piece below.

Cathryn Chase Regulatory Assistant

Following the approval of new broadcasting regulations in Australia last week, the Australian government has now released a set of draft copyright regulations (its current copyright laws will expire next April). Included in the draft, the government has asked carriage providers and rights owners to voluntarily help develop an anti-piracy code. While Australia currently has site blocking provisions in place, in recent years, it has struggled to come up with broadly-supported anti-piracy measures for industry. This difficulty was highlighted by the failure of its “three strikes” rule in 2016. This time round, the government has included provisions that will hopefully address some of the weaknesses in the previous code, including a provision that requires that the code not impose substantial costs on carriage service providers. The new regulations are open to consultation until October 6th.

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

And staying with former CASBAA Convention speakers, AsiaMX CEO Basil Chua says he wants to crack what he sees as the advertising industry’s root problem—a disconnect between buyers and sellers—and make it quicker and easier  to get results. Currently his programmatic services are up and running in Thailand and Malaysia with several Pay-TV and FTA channels in the mix and they have their sights on going live in Indonesia by year end.

Christopher Slaughter CEO

In the US, disappointing news for cable companies as a recent report from eMarketer suggests that cable customers are abandoning cable TV quicker than anticipated and spending less time in front of the TV, all of which is having a negative impact on advertising spending. 

Anjan Mitra Executive Director, India

A few weeks ago Tetra Pak released their 2017 “Connected Consumer” Report with some interesting findings, including data suggesting that the average global connected consumer spends 4.4 hours per day online, more than 56% of which is spent on mobile. According to Tetra Pak, in India, consumers spend a staggering 82% of their time on their mobile phones and there has been a rise of 23% of internet users spending an average of 8 hours per day online. A new collaboration between Irdeto and TataSky – the launch of a new Android-based OTT service – is hoping to cash in on this trend.

Jane Buckthought Advertising Consultant

Meanwhile according to Deloitte’s 2017 “Global Mobile Consumers Survey: UK Cut”, UK smartphone viewing has increased 500% since 2012. Smartphone ownership amongst UK adults (18-75) is now at 85%, and more than half of adult smartphone owners watch at least one video on their phone per week. This number is even higher for youth (16-19) – 79% report watching at least one video per week, and 54% were found to do so daily. Increasingly, consumers are also using their smartphones for watching long-form video, and some even use their device for live TV viewing (although this number is still modest). No matter how you look at it, the smartphone is becoming undeniably important for video.

Mark Lay Vice President, Singapore

OTT News Roundup for the week: The Fox+ streaming platform launched in Taiwan partnered with telecommunications operator Chunghwa Telecom with a 6-month exclusive deal. Amazon continues in its endeavour to become the Pay-TV operator to the world by scooping up smaller TV channels with minimal distribution in order to build itself into a video destination for every imaginable niche, with a particular focus on millennial audiences. This should definitely not go un-noticed but others may think differently wondering, Can the Everything Store Still Become the Everything Streaming Service? And to finish off, an open letter from the founder and CEO of Afrostream. For anyone planning or operating an OTT service this article documents one man’s journey very nicely. I have a feeling that Tonjé Bakang will be back. Many more stories, continually updated, on the CASBAA OTT Group Newsfeed.