4 August, 2017

Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending August 4th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

Christopher Slaughter CEO The deal has been in the works for weeks, and now it’s done; Discovery is buying Scripps for US$14.6 bln in cash and stocks. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Scripps CEO Ken Lowe are both delighted with the deal, which they say provides synergies that will help the combined company’s negotiating leverage with pay tv operators. The deal is not without its critics, however, who point out that it doesn’t change the fundamental issues in the current operating environment, even though it does lift the merged company higher in the pay TV industry league tables – even as Zaslav says Discovery is not “out of bullets” for other acquisitions. Next up, shareholder and regulatory approval, but both are widely expected to give the green light, and things are expected to be complete early next year.

 

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

Sadly, a Singapore court threw out a pirate site-block petition from PCCW, which operates the Viu TV OTT service in Singapore as well as other regional markets. The court didn’t challenge application of the site-blocking law, but it said PCCW did not have standing to sue, as it was neither the owner nor the exclusive licensee of the Korean content that is being pirated. (The fact that it had authorization from the copyright owners to sue on their behalf wasn’t good enough.) The result demonstrates the very high bar, and the very high costs, that current copyright laws impose on anyone attempting to restrain online piracy.   (Oh, and somebody should tell the court that exclusive carriage contracts are against public policy in Singapore!)

 

 

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

Other piracy tidbits: Another nasty legal battle is joined in Canada, pitting the cable industry against the owner of Kodi box piracy support site TVAddons.com. One judge ordered the cable plaintiffs to give back the domains seized a couple of weeks ago, but the judges in the Court of Appeal countermanded the restoration, saying the case should continue. Dueling lawyers for the foreseeable future, oh joy.  A study in Portugal concluded (as other ones have, in other countries) that site blocking is effective in producing major reductions in use of piracy websites. And Google seems to have awakened on the right side of the bed last week….they removed a host of streaming piracy sites from their search results (in the USA) and also stopped promoting torrents through a “best torrent site” feature.

 

 

Kevin Jennings Vice President

Figures from analytics research companies monitoring the YouTube Live TV app launched a couple of months ago in the US indicate that around 2 million people have installed the YouTube TV app. The live TV service is aimed at a younger generation of cord cutters and installs seem evenly split between iOS and Android devices. No word yet on whether the 2 million downloads is translating into subscribers — many users may have simply installed the app out of curiosity or could be on free trials that never convert to paid subscriptions.

 

 

Mark Lay Vice President, Singapore

Some interesting stories on the OTT front this week. NBCU’s Steve Burke is “skeptical that it’s (OTT) going to be a very large business or profitable business for the people that are in it, and they’re off to a relatively slow start“. At the same time research firm TDG finds that Hulu Subscribers Prefer Hulu to Traditional Pay TV. Amazon has outbid Sky for exclusive ATP Tour rights in the UK…except the four grand slams. And, FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned ad-tech company has found that viewers on TV-connected streaming platforms complete 98% of all video ads.

 

 

Cathryn Chase Regulatory Assistant

Hong Kong’s oldest pay-TV network, i-Cable TV, continues its downward spiral as its revenues decrease and costs increase. Earlier this May, CASBAA wrote about how the ailing company had been rescued by its minority shareholders and the consortium, Forever Top, after its longtime majority shareholder, Wharf Holdings, announced in March that it would stop funding the pay-TV network. Now, i-Cable TV has released its first-half results, reporting that its losses widened by 4% and its revenues shrank by 10%. Clearly, the network’s new shareholders have their work cut out for them.

 

 

Anjan Mitra Executive Director, India

Historically speaking, the cable TV distribution business in India has been a bit like the Wild West, which has changed somewhat in recent years as regulations and digitization admittedly have brought about transparency. Monopolies still remain in some pockets, though. The Punjab government vowed to break such an alleged monopoly owing to local political patronage, which the cable industry termed as a political witch-hunt. It now seems a good proposal is going awry even as newer players like Nxt Digital enter the state. Not only is the local government in the north Indian state finding it difficult to tackle monopoly issues, a local politician has proposed levying an extra entertainment tax on DTH and cable TV connections, which everybody believed had got subsumed in the newly-rolled out GST. To make matters even more worrisome, the Punjab government is studying a government-controlled MSO model prevalent in another state, Tamil Nadu. Meanwhile, regulator TRAI’s suggestions on barring government bodies from getting into broadcasting and such services’ distribution is still pending at MIB for approval. So much so for change!

 

 

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

Sky Television, in NZ, has instigated a $1.47 million civil suit against the operator of an ISD network.  The pirate operator issued a press statement saying he would fight the suit, public opinion was sure to support him, the box just allowed people to see what they want, and it was all legal because the streams came from other countries. Somehow, actually paying people who labour to produce the content didn’t enter into his thinking.

 

 

John Medeiros Chief Policy Officer

The Indian government maintains they are not going to set up a new entity to regulate TV content. One report translated this as “no pre-censorship of TV shows.” (India is not China, after all.) The government will continue to rely on self-regulation by the TV industry. But it is also energizing post-broadcast review mechanisms to make sure the Programme Code is followed.