TV Asia MIPCOM 2019

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TVASIA

WWW.TVASIA.WS

OCTOBER 2019

MIPCOM & ASIA VIDEO SUMMIT EDITION

OTT Content / Asian Formats PCCW’s Janice Lee / iflix’s Mark Britt

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CONTENTS

Redefining Disruption

FEATURES 10 MAKING WAVES

Leading OTT platforms are betting big on local originals and distinctive imports to win the battle for a share of viewing time.

Speaking at the Series Mania conference earlier this year, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos rejected the “disruptor” label that has been put on the platform since it went from being a repository for library series and movies to a deep-pocketed investor in content.

Ricardo Seguin Guise Publisher Anna Carugati Group Editorial Director Mansha Daswani Editor Kristin Brzoznowski Executive Editor Chelsea Regan Alison Skilton Associate Editors David Diehl Production & Design Director Phyllis Q. Busell Art Director Simon Weaver Online Director Dana Mattison Senior Sales & Marketing Manager Genovick Acevedo Sales & Marketing Coordinator Andrea Moreno Business Affairs Manager

Ricardo Seguin Guise President Anna Carugati Executive VP Mansha Daswani Associate Publisher & VP of Strategic Development TV Asia ©2019 WSN INC. 1123 Broadway, #1207 New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 924-7620 Fax: (212) 924-6940 Website: www.tvasia.ws

“I’m not a fan of the word ‘disruption,’ because it has such negative connotations,” Sarandos, chief content officer at Netflix, said. “It gets hung on my head a lot. It’s like burning things down and seeing what happens. That’s not what we’re up to. We’re trying to preserve and improve upon the formats and grow storytelling.”

Online platforms have certainly upended business models and put severe pressures on traditional pay-TV channels. But they are also investing heavily in the content ecosystem, everywhere, making it a particularly great time to be a producer. Netflix has productions across the region.

Amazon is focusing its efforts on Japan and India. In Southeast Asia, HOOQ, iflix and Viu are all aligning with leading creatives. Hulu Japan has a number of partnerships for originals, including with Spain’s The Mediapro Studio and HBO Asia on the upcoming The Head. This edition of TV Asia takes a deep dive into the programming strategies of some of the region’s leading platforms.

We also hear from iflix’s Mark Britt and PCCW’s Janice Lee on how they are positioning their platforms in Asia’s fast-moving OTT sector. Per new research from Media Partners Asia, the online video market in AsiaPac will generate revenues of $50 billion by 2024, up from $27 billion this year. Being agile, open to changing course and deploying smart business models that meet the needs of local markets will be key for companies angling for a slice of Asia’s growing online video revenues. As will having the best content possible, especially local fare. In that arena, existing IP is proving to be a valuable tool. Of note, Viu has high-profile remakes like The Bridge and Pretty Little Liars. But the format business can go both ways these days—a number of Asian-originated concepts are finding success internationally, from The Good Doctor in the U.S. to The Masked Singer everywhere to Mother in Turkey. This edition includes a special report on how content rights holders across Asia are stepping up their efforts to bring format concepts to the global market.

—Mansha Daswani

GET DAILY NEWS ON THE ASIAN REGION

10 18 SEEING DOUBLE

A look at the rising trade in Asian-originated formats.

18

INTERVIEWS

24 PCCW Media’s Janice Lee

28 iflix’s Mark Britt

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Bomanbridge Media Paul Goes to Hollywood / Walking the Yangtze with Ash Dykes / Shane the Chef A new food-travel hybrid series, Paul Goes to Hollywood is among the lead offerings from Bomanbridge Media. The show follows as Paul Hollywood heads off on an epic transcontinental adventure riding a customized HarleyDavidson as he explores the connection between films and food. “In this series, he is able to indulge in three of his greatest passions: bikes, movies and baking,” says Sonia Fleck, CEO of Bomanbridge. British adventurer Ash Dykes sets out to break a new record by traversing the length of the longest river in Asia in Walking the Yangtze with Ash Dykes. Meanwhile, the animated preschool series Shane the Chef is a celebration of food that seeks to inspire young audiences to embrace a healthier lifestyle.

Walking the Yangtze with Ash Dykes

“Bomanbridge Media has always been known to sit squarely on the center stage as a reliable and trusted distribution entity within Asia that truly understands international market needs.”

—Sonia Fleck

My Crown Princess

GMA Worldwide Beautiful Justice / The Gift / My Crown Princess GMA Worldwide is aiming to deliver Filipino dramas such as Beautiful Justice and The Gift to viewers across Asia.

Beautiful Justice is an action/crime series featuring three women who team up to form a vigilante group to uncover the truth behind the deaths of their loved ones in a suspicious buy-and-bust operation. The Gift tells the story of a man who lost his sense of sight after being hit by a stray bullet but begins to have visions about past and future events. Another highlight is My Crown Princess, a romantic comedy about a man-hater who wants to succeed in a male-dominated field as a ship captain. “These titles will appeal to viewers in Asia who are looking for themes that revolve around modern-day issues that affect society,” says Roxanne J. Barcelona, VP of GMA Worldwide.

“GMA remains committed to providing premium Filipino content to its customers.”

—Roxanne J. Barcelona

The Urban Vegetarian

Gusto TV DNA Dinners / Spencer’s BIG 30 / The Urban Vegetarian Gusto TV recently celebrated its one-year anniversary in Singapore, and “we’ve developed a deep connection with our viewers,” says Chris Knight, president and CEO of Gusto Worldwide Media. “Viewer engagement online is high, Gusto’s lineup has been refreshed regularly, and our Singapore partner is very happy with the response they’ve received from their customers.” Coming soon to Gusto TV is the popular series DNA Dinners, which explores the diverse heritage of 16 individuals as they discover their roots through cuisine. There’s a third season of Spencer’s BIG 30 with Spencer Watts. “Our Asian viewers gravitate to Spencer’s electrifying energy,” says Knight.

He calls The Urban Vegetarian “a fan favorite in Singapore.”

Knight adds, “Our Asian viewers appreciate Gusto TV’s global sensibility, and we offer the complete foodie experience.”

“We’re proud to say that we now have 150 hours of food programming with Mandarin subtitling and will have an additional 150 hours by next year.”

—Chris Knight

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HBO Asia HBO GO / HBO Asia Original Productions / HBO Original Content HBO GO, an internet-based streaming service, continues to expand its footprint across Asia. Vietnam and Malaysia joined markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia this year. “HBO GO will roll out in more territories soon,” says Magdalene Ew, head of marketing, creative and content at HBO Asia. Ew says that ramping up HBO Asia original productions has been a priority. “As a testament to our growing quality of Asian originals, The World Between Us recently made headlines for receiving the greatest number of nominations at the 54th Annual Golden Bell Awards in Taiwan,” she notes. There’s also a second season of the award-winning HBO Asia original The Teenage Psychic.

Original programming from HBO’s U.S. slate features on the HBO Asia channel as well.

“Besides U.S. productions, two new HBO Asia original productions are available on HBO GO and HBO this year.”

—Magdalene Ew

The Teenage Psychic

Mediacorp All Is Well / Wild City / India on Film Mediacorp is presenting to the marketplace All Is Well, a highconcept Chinese-language drama series co-produced with a Taiwanese production house. “The series combines an A-list assembly of acclaimed artists from Singapore and Taiwan and parallel storytelling through two interwoven plots, unlike anything in the market at the moment,” says Doreen Neo, Mediacorp’s chief content officer. There’s a fourth installment of the documentary series Wild City, which explores rarely seen wildlife teeming in Singapore’s forests. “The series reveals plenty of never-before-seen footage of wildlife, which urban Singapore is not commonly known for,” Neo says. India on Film is an informational, educational program documenting India’s history, with footage dating back to 1899. “History buffs will be enthralled by India on Film,” says Neo.

“Mediacorp is looking for partners in the creative ecosystem, and we’re open for business.”

All Is Well

—Doreen Neo

Your Turn to Kill

Nippon TV Your Turn to Kill Nippon TV’s crime and mystery series Your Turn to Kill was created with international adaptations in mind, having 20 episodes, which is double the number for traditional drama series in Japan. “It is a format that viewers simply cannot stop watching episode after episode, with a flurry of social media debates to find out who the killer is,” says Keisuke Miyata, who handles sales and licensing, international business development, at Nippon TV. In the series, a newly married couple who just bought their first home is convinced that their happy and peaceful life together is about to begin. Little did they expect that the house would set the stage for a string of bizarre deaths. When a threatening note reading “Your turn to kill” arrives, a dangerous game is set into motion.

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“Your Turn to Kill evokes the addictive nature of the viewers with its powerfully mysterious and frightening storyline.”

—Keisuke Miyata

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Rewind Networks HITS / HITS Movies From the Rewind Networks bouquet, HITS has a presence in 11 markets across Asia: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Brunei, the Maldives, Myanmar, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. Recent highlights on HITS include the original Charmed and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, “which have attracted a younger audience to our channel who may have heard about these franchises through their current reboots that piqued their interest in the originals,” says CEO Avi Himatsinghani. A newer entrant to the marketplace, HITS Movies celebrated its first anniversary on October 1. The channel is available in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Upcoming highlights include Sissy Spacek in Carrie on Halloween, as well as Alicia Silverstone in Clueless and Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf in November.

“Rewind Networks will continue to progressively launch HITS and HITS Movies in other markets across Asia.”

Clueless

—Avi Himatsinghani

TV5MONDE Asia-Pacific TV5MONDE Asie / TV5MONDE Pacifique / TV5MONDE Style HD While TV5MONDE has a wide global footprint, the Asia-Pacific region has been a strong part of its growth in the last few years.

“We offer a total of three channels in the region, all in high definition, with as many as eight subtitling languages across the offering,” says Alexandre Muller, managing director of TV5MONDE Asia-Pacific. The general-entertainment channels TV5MONDE Asie and TV5MONDE Pacifique have been “our showpieces, respectively, since 1996 and 2009,” he says. They reach more than 110 million households across the region, with the exceptions of Malaysia and North Korea. “Since 2015, TV5MONDE has made countless efforts to strengthen and extend its scope by offering additional content through its TV5MONDE Style HD channel, a lifestyle-dedicated linear channel designed for top-tier local audiences,” Muller adds.

La Baule-les-Pins on TV5MONDE

“Our message is clear and straightforward: TV5MONDE is an excellent and unique addition to any network.”

—Alexandre Muller

WarnerMedia Asia Pacific Cartoon Network / Boomerang / POGO There’s a slew of new highlights coming to the Cartoon Network, Boomerang and POGO channels across the Asia-Pacific region. “New to Cartoon Network is a great mix of the unusual, the surprising and the ridiculous,” says Leslie Lee, VP of Cartoon Network, Boomerang and POGO for the Asia Pacific. New series include Victor and Valentino, DC Super Hero Girls and Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart. “On Boomerang, coinciding with Scooby’s 50th birthday, we’ll welcome the guest-star-laden Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, featuring Ricky Gervais, Sia and even Batman,” says Lee. POGO has had a big year with the launch of Kalari Kids. “Now, we are also working on a new pipeline of original productions for the next two years,” Lee says.

DC Super Hero Girls on Cartoon Network

“Aside from plenty of content coming through the Warner Bros. and Cartoon Network pipelines from Burbank, we’re also busy commissioning originals and working on our own co-productions in the Asia Pacific.”

—Leslie Lee

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Netflix’s The Forest of Love.

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TV ASIA

Making

waves

Leading OTT platforms are betting big on local originals and distinctive imports to win the battle for a share of viewing time. By Mansha Daswani

V

ideo content budgets in India, Southeast Asia and Korea rose by 12 percent last year to reach about $10 billion, according to Media Partners Asia (MPA). Digital, while a small percentage at the moment, is on the rise, with online video content investments in the surveyed markets up by 60 percent to $858 million in 2018, MPA reports, driven by Amazon, Hotstar and Netflix in India.

While Netflix’s Indian originals have generated the most headlines—notably the big-budget Sacred Games— the platform is deploying original spend across the region. Erika North, director of original content for Netflix in Asia, says the streamer has 30-plus new Asian originals from Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, India and South Korea. “We announced a total of 17 new commissions at the first See What’s Next Asia slate event in Q4 last year, and this year we have announced six Korean originals, three Chinese-language originals, ten Indian films and we will also be launching our first Thai original, The Stranded, later this year.”

For North, who led HBO Asia’s original programming efforts before joining the streaming giant, the broad remit is for “great stories told with a unique vision. The AsiaPac region is rich with creative talent, mythology, history and culture. Our goal is to find authentic stories that can resonate in the home market but with universal elements that allow that story to transcend borders. Asia is a hotbed for creative talent, both behind and in front of the

camera. Ultimately, we’re looking for creative teams who have bold and ambitious ideas, a clear vision for creating characters who can connect emotionally with our audience and a strong sense of openness as to how we can help them to bring that vision to life.”

GETTING HOOKED At HOOQ, where the footprint covers Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and India, the focus is on local content—acquired and original—in Southeast Asia, while the service in India is positioned as the “home for Hollywood,” says Jennifer Batty, the chief content officer at the platform. “Local does drive more viewing minutes and consumption for us, but easy-viewing Hollywood content still has a following,” Batty reports.

In terms of originals, Indonesia has seen the most activity, Batty notes, given HOOQ’s position in the market and the sheer size of the country.

“We’ve had several series in Indonesia, with different models. We’ve done two seasons of a short-form series, Keluarga Badak (Rhino Family), which came from a YouTube channel. It’s very Indonesian—it’s not something that crosses borders, but that’s OK because people in Indonesia love it. We’ve done a series called Cek Toko Sebelah: The Series, from a very popular existing IP. It was one of the biggest movies in Indonesia and it has performed incredibly well as a movie on HOOQ. We adapted it into a series. We’ve also taken brand-new IPs. We have a crime series, Brata. It stars very popular Indonesian actors. Just like the phenomenon you’re finding in North America and Europe, some big theatrical

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produced a show called Rewrite and it’s one of the most successful originals we’ve done in Indonesia.”

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are the priority markets for iflix’s original content efforts, according to Mark Britt, CEO and co-founder. “We give the people we work with an enormous amount of creative freedom,” he says on fostering ties with the production community. “There are no constraints on episode lengths or number of episodes. We don’t dictate the format. We try to let them push the boundaries as much as possible….

On mass-market free-to-air TV, you want to create something that interests everyone and offends nobody. You don’t want that in the digital world. You want shows that people are passionate about.”

RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

Hulu Japan’s acquired slate includes One Life Studios’ historical epic Porus.

actors are excited about doing series on OTT. They’re looking to do something a little bit different than what is found on free-to-air. We look to push the boundaries a bit. Our production values are slightly different. We work closely with our production companies on character development. These are all things that the big theatrical actors are saying they want to be involved with.”

Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, HOOQ has a series in development in Thailand, a successful short-form production in the Philippines called Sex Talks with Dr. Holmes and a theatrical film in Singapore, Wet Season, from filmmaker Anthony Chen. “His last movie, Ilo Ilo, was a huge success,” Batty says. “Singapore is a market where we’re looking to do more from an original production point of view. It’s exciting for us to have our first partnership be with somebody with the reputation and vision Anthony has.”

A DIFFERENT VIU Viu is also commissioning originals across its footprint in both unscripted and scripted. “We have learned about our users’ behaviors and consumption preferences,” says Janice Lee, managing director of PCCW Media Group, on the platform’s local-content journey thus far.

“For example, in Malaysia, we’re in season two of The Bridge, which is more of an action, thriller type of story, and we announced Keluarga Baha Don, which is a bit of a dark comedy. In Malaysia, action and dark comedies work. In Indonesia, romantic dramas and romantic comedies do well, and some thriller types of stories. We

And in order to discover what people are passionate about, local intel is crucial.

“We have very strong local content teams in every one of our territories,” says HOOQ’s Batty. “That’s incredibly important because we need to be tuned in to the local production industry. We need to be the first platform that production companies think of when they’re producing a new show.”

North at Netflix points to the creative support the platform can offer producers and writers. “Our goal when we work with creative talent is to support them and give them the platform to tell stories that they have not had an opportunity to tell elsewhere,” she says. “For our owned originals, Netflix works with creators from script to screen, that is from initial concept to final delivery. We are with our creative partners all the way. We are there to support the execution of their vision. We spend a lot of time listening to them to build the trust that we are as invested in the success of their shows as they are. Creators have the artistic freedom to bring their vision to life. From what we have observed and learned in the past, authenticity is what makes content travel, so staying true to this authenticity in creative intent—the story, the characters, the local culture, in short, the world that these creators are building—is very important to us.”

As for what she looks for, North mentions the “strength and originality of the story and executional capabilities of the creative team,” all of which she found in the creatives behind her first slate of Chinese-language originals: DJ Chen for Nowhere Man, Neal Wu for Triad Princess and Ho Yu-Hang and Quek Shio-Chuan for The Ghost Bride.

“These are familiar genres but told with a twist, like very long movies shot in a multi-episodic format,” she says. They are all “infused with universal themes—from gangster-brotherhood to romance to the supernatural— which we believe will resonate with audiences around the world.”

HOOQ’s Batty is also looking out for content that can cross borders. “Ideally, whenever we’re acquiring content, we would like it for all of our territories, including

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DocuBay is looking for one-off docs for its new SVOD platform, which features titles like Airships: Back to the Future.

India. We see Thai content resonating well with our Indonesian audience. We also find that there is high consumption of Filipino content in Singapore.”

While discovering content that can travel is a crucial concern for the multi-market operators, local market leaders like Hulu Japan have other considerations. For the platform, which is a division of Japan’s leading broadcaster, Nippon TV, acquired content is a vital part of the lineup. “Besides the major [Hollywood] studios, we source our content from around the globe,” says Kazufumi Nagasawa, chief content officer. And Nagasawa has an eclectic acquisitions remit: recent pickups include the Spanish prison drama Locked Up and the Indian historical epic Porus. “We are keen to acquire representative and distinctive content from each territory,” he says.

The platform is forecast to become profitable this fiscal year, Nagasawa reports, a milestone given what he refers to as an OTT market in Japan that is “too crowded.

Consolidation will proceed in the meantime.”

For its originals strategy, co-productions have been essential, with Hulu Japan partnering with HBO Asia on a number of projects.

Most recently, the two companies announced a deal for The Head with The Mediapro Studio.

“This is the first case of us participating in an English-language drama with Japanese talent,” Nagasawa says.

Even with its international alliances and acquisitions, “domestic content accounts for the vast majority in terms of volume and consumption,” Nagasawa observes.

this year, a direct-to-consumer SVOD proposition rolled out in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. This September, iwonder launched in a slew of other Southeast Asian markets.

One of iwonder’s key differentiators is a news feed on the home page that highlights doc titles exploring related themes. “We don’t see anyone doing this anywhere else,” says James Bridges, iwonder’s co-founder and CEO. “The philosophy came out of this idea that there has to be pretty close overlap between people who are interested in what’s going on in the world and people who are interested in high-quality documentaries. So we thought, let’s have a curated newsfeed— not an open firehose—that comes across your home page presenting you with [documentaries] that are related to or adjacent to what is going on in the news, just to give you deeper context. For example, Trump and Kim meet in Vietnam and the associated docs are on Vietnam’s tech boom, Trump’s relationships in Indonesia and the assassination of Kim Jong-un’s halfbrother in Kuala Lumpur. A Harvey Weinstein story can be associated with a documentary about the underrepresentation of women in positions of power. You can do it with climate change, gun control, Russia.

These are ongoing themes that we license and curate

NICHE APPEAL General-entertainment platforms are leading much of the OTT activity in Asia, but niche services are emerging, among them iwonder.

Unveiled at the APOS Summit in Bali in April 2018, the documentary and current-affairs content platform went live as a branded destination across the iflix footprint last summer and then launched on TVNZ’s on-demand offering in New Zealand in December. Earlier

Ulan, a romantic drama, is part of HOOQ’s original slate from the Philippines.

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our movies. And everything is in English. We will go ahead and customize and localize as demand requires.”

Tripathi is confident that DocuBay’s unique perspective will be a draw for telco operators across Asia hungry for content partnerships.

“They want something that has a differentiated proposition. There’s a lot of content floating around and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for newer players to be able to find a distinct positioning. I think DocuBay is in a very cozy nook that way. With our concentrated approach to the content we are acquiring, we [expect to be a differentiator] for telco operators and other business partners that we are dealing with, and also for consumers.”

Among DocuBay’s unique propositions, Tripathi explains, is DocuBytes. “It’s short snackable content, usually around 20 seconds, which you can consume on the go. It is great for being able to explore and discover new content. At the same time, it gives you an idea of what it is that you would like to sit down and watch. So within the product, within the kind of content we are rolling out, there is a strong emphasis on mobile consumption. That is not at the expense of a more lean-forward viewing experience on larger screens.”

BOOM TIME

First broadcast on Colors in India, Viacom18’s Silsila Badalte Rishton Ka moved to the digital platform Voot for its second season.

content around. There are not many household-name documentaries out there, but there are thousands of great, quality documentaries. So [the newsfeed] helps give people a way into discovery of the catalog.”

The platform currently has about 1,000 programs from across the documentary spectrum. “iwonder matches trending news with real-life stories about the people and events shaping current affairs, music, pop culture, religion, sports, nature, war, history, politics, science, technology and much more,” Bridges says. “Our key focus is on quality, so a majority of our feature docs are festival selections or award winners.” Bridges hopes to get the slate up to more than 2,000 titles by the end of 2019.

JUST THE FACTS Also operating in the factual SVOD space is DocuBay, a service headquartered in India but with global aspirations. “We are looking for one-offs and one-off docufeatures,” says COO Akul Tripathi on the content strategy.

“We are staying true to [our tagline] of ‘OneTribe’— experiences that unite people from around the world as one tribe in this incredibly connected world. People living in different parts of the world are no longer as different as they perhaps once were. We’re looking for stories with very specific viewpoints or opinions. That is the broad way in which we are looking at picking and curating

With the OTT players injecting money into the ecosystem, “the outlook remains healthy across much of Asia for the video content industry,” says Stephen Laslocky, a VP at MPA and principal author of the Asia Video Content Dynamics 2019 report. Budgets across TV, film and online video are scaling up in Southeast Asia, India and Korea, but “there are pockets of pressure in other markets,” Laslocky adds, “especially for incumbent free-to-air broadcasters in Malaysia and the Philippines, where TV budgets were reined in. Falls in TV viewership have been especially pronounced in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, largely precipitated by digital competition as viewers flee marginal TV channels. Viewing data suggests that popular TV channels are relatively well insulated from online video competition, at least for now.”

TV viewership is being driven by drama and variety, Laslocky notes. “In growing or capacity-constrained markets, variety can be the easier genre to scale, with international format houses playing a key role. Movies, both Hollywood and domestic, are good audience pulls.”

Netflix, for its part, is looking to invest across all genres.

“We’re looking for stories that haven’t had the chance yet to be told in the long-form format—and even then we are open as to how this format works to support the story,” North says. “We’re at the start of our journey producing original content in Asia, and there is much to learn.

Ultimately, we want our catalog to have something for everyone, so the breadth and diversity of stories and formats is important to us.”

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GMA Worldwide’s The Half Sisters.

Mansha Daswani explores the rising trade in Asianoriginated formats.

Seeing Double T

hat rapper T-Pain beat out soul icon Gladys Knight on The Masked Singer in the U.S. isn’t actually the weirdest thing about the show. Neither is the lineup of utterly insane costumes that the participating celebrities don to mask their identities. Arguably the strangest thing about The Masked Singer is its slow march from obscure Korean entertainment show to the format landscape’s obsession of the moment.

Launched in 2015 on MBC Korea as King of Mask Singer, the show was a modest hit in the domestic market. Some Asian adaptations followed, including a Thai version that raised the format’s profile when it landed an International Emmy Award nomination. Craig Plestis, a producer in the U.S., discovered it when he was out to dinner at a Thai restaurant in Los Angeles. He quickly secured the rights and landed a slot for the show on FOX, where it became a phenomenon.

Since then, the format has notched up deals in the U.K., Germany, France, Argentina, Australia and Mexico, among other countries.

For companies in Asia that represent entertainment formats, The Masked Singer blazing a trail across markets that tend to export more ideas than they import signals a host of new international opportunities.

“We are receiving requests for unique ideas from the Asian market,” says Sonia Fleck, the CEO of Singapore-based independent distributor Bomanbridge Media. “Countries such as the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K. and recently Italy have been in discussions with us for some out-of-the-box creative studio game shows, talent competitions and observational reality series. Buyers agree that it’s getting tougher to garner the record-breaking ratings that were more readily clenched in the past. The Masked Singer is just one example of unique, off-the-wall ideas which entertain and create the audience stickiness we all hope to achieve.”

BEHIND THE MASK Lester Hu, the head of formats and international business at Hunan TV, is optimistic about the prospects for the global export of Chinese IP in the wake of the success of The Masked Singer.

“I do think China will be a future center for creative formats,” Hu says. “The Chinese audience is looking for something new every day. It’s really competitive in China. The other thing about the Chinese market is that the money is there. There is always money for good content. That’s why I believe China will be a future format creator, someday. People want new ideas. We’re creating them constantly, and there is

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Nippon TV’s Woman—My Life for My Children— was remade to great success in Turkey.

money to support good ideas and good content. So that will keep us going forward.”

In Japan, the distribution team of leading broadcaster Nippon TV has witnessed a “substantial rise in interest from Western buyers,” says Shigeko Cindy Chino, the associate managing director for international business development.

But Chino is well aware that, as in the case of The Masked Singer, it can take time to find success with an entertainment brand globally.

SLOW & STEADY “Our megahit format Dragons’ Den took three years from pitching internationally until it launched on BBC Two in 2005,” Chino says. “So we know it is not easy, but we thrive as an entertainment industry leader to seek the next Dragons’ Den. We are pursuing a strategy with our production team to constantly come up with ideas that will transcend borders.

We are recruiting ideas that specifically target the international market and teaming up with partners that are interested in co-development and in sharing common distribution goals.”

Chino adds that Nippon TV formats come with a track record, having already been successes at home. It’s the same situation for Hunan TV, Hu says.

“Our first goal is to make sure it’s a success in China. That means every format we put out to the international market has been a success in China. And then we think, How can it be Westernized or Americanized? When we used to do acquisitions, we tried so hard to understand the format.

Why had it been such a big success in the U.K., for example, but didn’t suit China that well? So we had to do the localization ourselves. I think our potential buyers should look at things that way as well. They should think about how they can abstract some of the key points from a Chinese or Asian format and make it work in a Western market.

Hunan has worked on so many international formats; we know how to localize things. I believe that is something we can provide to buyers or producers in other countries—our experience. And we’re not that strict on the format. We can be quite flexible and cooperative and offer them our experiences and what we can do to help them to really make a success in other countries.”

Among the big domestic hits on Hu’s slate is Super-Vocal, a new take on the singing competition, this one featuring classically trained singers.

GLOBAL ALLIANCES International partnerships have been important to Hunan TV, Hu says. It has a deal with The Story Lab for the voiceover talent format The Sound, co-developed World’s Got Talent with Fremantle and Syco and worked with Endemol Shine Group on Acting Up. Nippon TV, meanwhile, has collaborated with Red Arrow Studios, a partnership that Chino says “has enabled us to broaden our perspective in the sense of being aware of the international cultural differences and the latest trends.”

The game-show format Block Out emerged out of that alliance. The show launched in Thailand over the summer.

CJ ENM is also partnering with global media companies.

“Over the last few years, we have collaborated with Endemol Shine Group for The Society Game, and ITV Studios, Banijay and Gil Formats for other new formats,” says Diane Min, the Korean company’s head of format sales. “We are consistently working on co-productions for fresh formats that target the European and American markets.”

But there are challenges for Asian format distributors.

Among them is the fact programmers are still cagey about betting on new concepts from anyone other than the usual suspects.

Bomanbridge’s Fleck references a “lack of openness and capacity to push beyond comfort zones. Channel heads focus on shows which follow the traditional formulas for success. By traditional, I mean that buyers first request successful sales to other ‘key territories’ or look at the same corporate players.”

Nevertheless, Fleck is so confident of the prospects for Asian formats that her company is setting up a development think tank, The Brewery, in Singapore. “We shall both develop internal IP with fantastic creatives as well as collate and gather a very select number of third-party formats that have strong legs to stand on.”

Among the format brands Bomanbridge is working on is Little Masters, a talent competition that originated in China.

“We realized that the show had strong identity pillars and

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Bomanbridge represents the format rights to the talent competition Little Masters, which originated in China.

could stand up for international review. Following some adjustments on the duration, we have now entered into negotiation with three international territories for this series. It’s very satisfying to find good ideas that are well received by respected industry players.”

SCRIPTED SAVVY

was also sealed for the French market, and more deals are to be unveiled soon.”

Barcelona concedes that the scriptedformats space is not an easy one. “The sale of scripted formats is challenging, as markets are looking for crime and political dramas for adaptation, usually 12 to 20 episodes in length. Most GMA titles have an average of 40 episodes and crime and political dramas are not subjects that [do] well locally. While there are prospects in emerging markets such as Myanmar and Africa, their budgets are very low and their production costs are limited.”

She continues, “While we regard format sales as a lucrative business, we need to devote more time and resources to this area as it involves convincing not just buyers but producers, viewer marketers and airtime sales.”

At India’s GoQuest Media Ventures, there is a focus on bringing international scripted formats to the country’s booming OTT market. Scripted formats are indeed a hot commodity in India at the moment, with recent deals including Luther, Hostages, UnREAL and The Office. “[Linear] TV is not taking any risks,” says Jimmy George, VP of sales and acquisitions. “They’ve moved a bit beyond kitchen politics to romance and more urban stories, but digital is where the real remake market is. There is a lot of opportunity.”

There is so much opportunity across the region that many Asian distributors are making formats a crucial part of their growth strategies. “The format business is positioned as a core pillar in our overseas sales,” says Nippon TV’s Chino. “We continue to thrive on challenges in this area by constantly coming out with renewed schemes and initiatives, holding high hopes for creating the next Dragons’ Den or Mother.”

Bomanbridge’s Fleck adds, “As the big hits are harder to find, there is a space now for industry mavericks to take the leap and jump into new local creative circles, one of which is indeed Asia. What might be a rough jewel is, as we have seen, a true diamond. It just requires a bit of cultural adaptation to hit the bullseye.”

Just as the trade in Asian entertainment formats is picking up, so is interest in scripts from the region. Nippon TV’s Mother and Woman–My Life for My Children–, for example, were both adapted in Turkey.

“Turkey has contributed to becoming our gateway to the remote areas of the world and has triggered more interest in scripted titles from clients abroad,” Chino explains. “We are taking all available resources to meet the demands of our clients by increasing our salespeople as well as improving our sales materials. Since the requirements and preferences of produced works, as well as business styles, hugely differ among the different cultures, we are trying to allocate our titles from our vast catalog to the right market by utilizing professional advice from the respective major markets.”

GMA Worldwide has licensed scripted formats into Latin America and Vietnam and has received inquiries from Myanmar and Malaysia, according to Roxanne J. Barcelona, the company’s VP. “According to clients from Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia, GMA’s stories are relatable to their cultures, with common themes and values on family, love, friendship, perseverance, diligence, and so on.” Barcelona continues, “GMA also produces dramas which revolve around modern-day issues of HIV, mental health, extended families, LGBT, etc.”

Nippon TV’s Chino also references the universal themes and storylines in the company’s dramas as being key selling points. “Also, the flexibility and adaptability for a longer series made it possible for a long-running success.

Interestingly enough, Mother has been produced not only in Turkey but also in South Korea, and will soon start in Ukraine. An option Hunan TV is offering up the game-show format The Rocking Bridge.

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base a high pickup in engagement. Within the first half, we saw more than 30 billion video minutes consumed. That’s growing very quickly. At the core of it is Southeast Asia, where we’ve established a leadership position. That’s being driven by the adoption and quick pickup of mobile data usage. It’s also the content that we’re offering, which is a lot of Asian content as well as the addition of Viu originals, which we started about 18 months ago.

TV ASIA: Where do you see the potential for growth ahead?

LEE: We’re in 17 markets. We look at the Middle East as one region, and we’re in eight markets there. Southeast Asia is the growth driver, primarily Thailand and Indonesia. Hong Kong and Singapore are the most sophisticated markets, so the CPMs for advertising as well as sell-through are very strong.

While the smaller markets don’t account for as much in terms of monthly active users, they are significant contributors in terms of revenue. Indonesia and Thailand have a lot of headroom for growth. I believe we’re still scratching the surface in markets like Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia.

Janice Lee PCCW Media

By Mansha Daswani

aunched in 2015, Viu today boasts 36 million monthly active users across its 17-market footprint in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Backed by Hong Kong-based telco giant PCCW, Viu took a different route than most of its competitors, rolling out at its inception with a dual AVOD and SVOD model—one that many others have followed. As managing director of PCCW Media Group, Janice Lee is driving the strategy at Viu. She tells TV Asia about local content investments, growth opportunities and working with advertisers.

L

TV ASIA: Tell us about Viu’s growth path over the last few years.

LEE: We’ve reached about 36 million monthly active users.

That has grown from about 20 million a year ago. What’s driven that is a combination of in-market penetration as well as new markets. At the same time, we saw within the user

TV ASIA: My understanding is that Indonesia has emerged as the real battleground, given the size of the market.

LEE: That is why, apart from the Korean content, which is one of the most popular kinds of Asian programming across the region, we started to go more local about 12 to 18 months ago.

We don’t want to be a service that looks foreign and we just make ourselves available in 17 markets. We want to be what local viewers want to watch every day and not only occasionally. So with the Viu originals in Indonesia, we have done Viu Pitching Forums where we work with local producers and writers. We facilitate and develop series or film projects pitched by talented Indonesian filmmakers to experts from the industry. We’re now also working with colleges to do Viu Shorts!, so we’re developing new young talent. We see longterm potential in the market.

TV ASIA: You’ve significantly expanded your originals slate.

What have been the key lessons in that journey?

LEE: We have been producing Viu originals in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, the Middle East, etc. We have learned about our users’ behaviors and consumption preferences. For example, in Malaysia, we’re in season two of The Bridge, which is more of an action, thriller type of story, and we announced Keluarga Baha Don, which is a bit of a dark comedy. In Malaysia, action and dark comedies work. In Indonesia, romantic dramas and romantic comedies do well, and some thriller types of stories. We produced a show called Rewrite and it’s one of the most successful originals we’ve done in Indonesia.

TV ASIA: What role do partnerships play in your programming strategy?

LEE: Whether it’s The Bridge or Pretty Little Liars, we are continually seeking out partnerships. Wattpad is another one that we collaborate with for the Philippines. In looking for IP, whether it’s original or licensed, we want great stories that resonate with the local audience, and ones that we feel will translate. When we do a format, let’s say The Bridge, it’s not about translating the script and changing the faces to local talent. We take the backbone and work with writers and the original IP owners so that they understand what parts of the

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lot of video views, so we have a lot of inventory. We are a destination for advertisers with video ads.

Viu has been expanding its lineup of originals with a number of format-based shows, including Pretty Little Liars.

story will resonate with a local audience. We can take one stream of it and maybe develop it a bit more versus taking the entire original story. So the local adaptation is quite important.

TV ASIA: What is the SVOD/AVOD breakdown at Viu? LEE: We’re about 50-50 right now between SVOD and AVOD revenues. The advertising engine has fired up in the last two years. We were the first ones to decide on this dual revenue stream. The other major players in the market started with SVOD—that seemed to be easy from an operator point of view to understand. We started with a dual revenue stream because we do understand the SVOD model and we knew it would take time for the market to develop. You also want to be able to garner the widest audience. For SVOD, we price anywhere from $1.99 to $4.99, depending on the market.

Singapore is closer to $4.99, markets like Indonesia and the Philippines are closer to $1.99. This is Asia—we can’t have one global price. And because we are transparent about our results, since we’re part of a public company, we wanted to be able to monetize faster. We saw AVOD as an opportunity to groom an audience base as well as to monetize while we are grooming the audience base.

TV ASIA: Tell us about your ad offering. How are marketers responding to the Viu offer?

LEE: We work with advertisers in a number of ways. If they come in as part of a Viu original, there is a lot more integrated branding. For example, in Singapore, we did a show called No Sleep No FOMO. That was a format from Dentsu/The Story Lab that we took on and changed into much more premium content, and we have FWD, an insurance company, as our title sponsor. Their theme is all about celebrating life—the energy, excitement and adventure of life. No Sleep No FOMO matched with that very well. We didn’t develop the content for the advertiser, but we found a brand [where the format] resonated with their core values. Apart from just being a title sponsor, there were FWD talent segments in the adventures themselves.

And then at the other end of the spectrum, we’re working directly with agencies and advertisers, where they come in to buy premium advertising. We work with a lot of models, whether it’s cost per completed views or cost per click. We also do programmatics, because Viu generates a

TV ASIA: How are you using data and analytics in your content decisions?

LEE: We didn’t do Viu originals from the getgo. We didn’t know enough yet about our users. Now, with our data we’re learning a lot about the different markets, what they like to watch. And that does feed into how we greenlight different content. We also use data analytics in terms of onboarding customers.

Apart from content costs, customeracquisition costs are a barrier to being efficient at [growing subscribers]. We look at attribution analysis to see where the highyield customers come in from. When we look at our high-yield customers, it’s not just someone who pays [a subscription fee]. That’s simple: they pay, you know who they are, you build a predictive model on that. We look at usage. We value engagement. If the customer has your service through a telco bundle, but they don’t use it, we can’t generate advertising from that. We can only generate advertising if they are engaged; if they consume minutes. That gives us the ad inventory. So we look at how to acquire active users and yield from that point of view.

TV ASIA: Do you envision adding live channels to the lineup?

LEE: We’re constantly looking at what’s next. With 36 million users, we can think about what other services we can offer besides content on VOD. With live channels, we may have something to talk about very soon.

TV ASIA: What synergies exist with Now TV? LEE: Within the media group I run, there’s Viu, Now TV and a free-TV service in Hong Kong called ViuTV. In markets like Hong Kong, having free-TV, pay-TV and OTT services allows us to acquire content for all platforms. Then, with ViuTV, we produce thousands of hours of original Chinese content, and those have appeal in markets like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, so we are also bringing content from Hong Kong to the rest of the world.

TV ASIA: As competition intensifies in the 12 to 18 months ahead, what areas will you be focusing on at Viu? LEE: We’re not complacent. We’re conscious that others are coming to the market. Hopefully, that also signifies that where we were first, in Southeast Asia, there’s tremendous potential.

Global players are taking notice that these are markets that will continue to develop and are sustainable. We’re focusing on how we continue to be a service that the local audience will connect with and not just a service that appeals to the top 3 percent of the population. That goes from how we do our user interface to how we operate. We have country managers and teams that know the local markets. How to promote, what to promote, how to reach out to the local audience can’t be determined by us sitting in Hong Kong; it has to be at a local level. Secondly, how do you decide what content assets to invest in? Ideas are often brought to us by the local teams and greenlit regionally. The local teams are super important. They give us tremendous local insight.

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Mark Britt iflix I

n 2015, iflix went live in Asia with an SVOD service delivering a heavy dose of Hollywood content. Today, the platform has a radically different proposition, having doubled down on local content, added an ad-supported tier and expanded its offering with live channels. Mark Britt, co-founder and CEO, talks to TV Asia about changing course, using data and building scalable businesses in markets where incomes are low and tech obstacles still exist. By Mansha Daswani TV ASIA: You’ve done several programming and strategic investment deals this year as you’ve pivoted toward more local content. What was the impetus behind that move?

BRITT: In the media business, people talk about change and evolution as if it’s a bad thing. As though it’s some form of failure. In the technology business, it’s not. The iterative process of change is a positive step. You start by saying, We don’t know what the customer wants in the future. We don’t know what the future of TV will look like, but we’re going to evolve our business every single day in response to data. We’re going to follow that data to the point when we’re meeting our customers’ needs better. There have been two big shifts in our business, both driven by data. One has been around solving the payments problem in emerging markets. And in the short term, you can’t. The infrastructure challenges, the customers’ cash-flow issues and the challenges in the mobile telco billing system create such friction for customers that it makes getting premium entertainment a tough experience. We’ve worked to address that. We’re getting better. We have about a million directly paying customers. It’s been four hard years to get there. Churn levels are high because people have cash-flow issues. So the first big pivot was, if we want to entertain as many people as possible, we have to go free. We did that in the middle of last year, and it’s had a hugely positive impact.

The second major theme, driven by data, is we realized that there are 300,000 or 400,000 people in these countries that care about Western content, but there are 40 million to 60 million in the mass market who want better local content. So we’ve shifted our budgets from roughly 80 percent Western, some regional and about 10 percent local to 80 percent local. That’s all driven by data. Local content owners care passionately about their local audience. So the rules around windowing, distribution and promotion of content are driven by local market factors. When you’re working with large Western studios, they tend to be very passionate about their global policies, which are informed by market conditions in the U.S. and U.K. The major strategic deals we’ve made have been towards that end, really establishing iflix as a fixture in the local content ecosystem in all our key markets.

TV ASIA: Where are you seeing the biggest successes in the local content space? Series, movies, entertainment?

BRITT: We love taking local movies, pretty much straight out of the box office. If they do well, we then commission a TV series from that movie. It’s the same cast, the same crew, the same director. You’re getting movie-quality development into TV series for the first time in a lot of these countries.

About 30 percent of the Indonesian box office is on iflix exclusively, within 90 to 100 days. We also do a lot of live sports. We streamed over 1,500 games last year; 221 live football matches were exclusive to us in Malaysia. We’re the ten-year owner of the Malaysian football rights in a joint venture with the league.

TV ASIA: For series, do you drop all episodes at once?

BRITT: We do. There’s what we call a “decay curve” for completion rates of series. The other index that we look at is what we call “binge-watching intensity”—the number of hours that passes between episode consumption. The longer you stretch out the distribution of series, the lower the completion rate, and then the lower the binge-watching intensity later. So we don’t put any rules around it, we let them go for it.

TV ASIA: What have been some of the key lessons learned from your original content investments?

BRITT: We give the people we work with an enormous amount of creative freedom. There are no constraints on episode lengths or number of episodes. We don’t dictate the format. We try to let them push the boundaries as much as possible. We’re entering an interesting discussion, as an industry, around appropriate censorship levels. There’s an odd dichotomy in many of these markets. The content on free to air, because it’s mass market, is very safe, to the point of being mundane or generic. And on the flip side, young kids are mostly pirating content that is deeply offensive to many local religious standards. The most successful show we’ve done is Nur. It’s about a religious leader in a mosque who falls in love with a prostitute. There’s no sex or nudity, because there doesn’t need to be. But it’s a show that pushes the boundaries in a very local way and is very sensitive to local community standards.

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competition has shifted. It used to be, create great content, lock up deep monopoly platforms and get steady cash flow. Now you’re creating controversial content, building a complex technology platform, acquiring users with a direct retail brand and then facing the pressures every day of needing to maintain and capture their attention by delighting them. That’s a very different business. It’s tough, but incredibly rewarding when you get it right.

Rise to Power is an extension to the KL Gangster Underworld franchise on iflix, based on a Malaysian movie.

TV ASIA: How has the response been to your ad offerings?

BRITT: The free-to-air ad market in Southeast Asia is $4.5 billion a year. No one can remember a time that they rushed home to catch the [live broadcast] of their favorite show, and at the same time, free-to-air advertising is still going up. It’s because the digital market is not yet there to move the ad dollars to. The wonderful thing about moving iflix to advertising is brands have genuinely welcomed us because they have been looking for a vehicle to advertise in digital. They don’t believe YouTube or Facebook is a great destination for their brands. There are two conversations we’re having with advertisers now. One is, You’re a TV advertiser, how do you extend your TV campaign into the digital context? We’ve done the data work with Nielsen where for a client like Unilever, we can match their internal proprietary targeted audience segments. What is the audience for Dove?

How do I buy that same targeted audience using the same data on iflix? The other is, it’s like YouTube, but it’s good!

TV ASIA: How have you designed the user interface to promote discovery and encourage watch time?

BRITT: The media business is a fragmented landscape that is fragmenting more and more every single day. Emerging markets skew young demographically. About 68 percent of Southeast Asia is under the age of 30. These are young people with short attention spans and many options. There are two strategies for that. One is, you have to raise the bar. And instead of putting rules around how people will consume things, you need to delight them. If they love you, they come back; if they don’t, they don’t. All the traditional rules of pay TV around contracts and channels and ecosystems are dead. Customers are in complete control. So you just have to do a wonderful job. The second thing is that many aspects of engagement, personalization, push notifications, reminders, are technology-led questions. We have just over 200 full-time engineers; we’ve been building our technology on this for the last five years. About 80 percent of our consumption comes from personalized recommendations. When we do a good job of algorithmically servicing a great show for you, you watch it. If we mess it up, you switch off the platform.

The interesting challenge that many media businesses are finding, as the new landscape evolves, is the basis of

TV ASIA: Tell us about managing the complexities of telco partnerships.

BRITT: Telcos are a critical part of delivering video in an ecosystem that still has very significant structural challenges. We host our content within the environments of over 20 telcos in Southeast Asia. When you only have a 300 kb connection, iflix works. So we’re solving fundamental structural issues in terms of how the internet works [in emerging markets]. And on the commercial level, 85 percent of customers don’t have access to WiFi. They are in a mobile-data-led environment. If you don’t manage that well, the cost of mobile data to the user dwarfs anything else in the process. If you manage that well and you can bundle great content with mobile data and remove the fear for the customer on how they get charged, then consumption goes through the roof. The average iflix customer doesn’t have mobile data every day, and 98 percent are on a prepaid telco bundle. The average iflix customer will only have mobile data four to five times a week. On the days they have mobile data, if we can bundle iflix with it, they’ll consume an average of 1.5 hours a day. When we don’t do that effectively and they are fearful of mobile data charges, they’ll consume 25 to 30 minutes.

TV ASIA: What market forces do you see impacting your business in the next six months?

BRITT: At a structural level, five years ago, the main questions we were asked and that we had for ourselves were, Is there going to be an iflix? Do people watch TV on mobile?

Is pay TV going to get to scale? Is an independent, disruptive business focused on digital going to be successful?

Those aren’t the questions now. OTT has won, linear TV is dying and it will continue to die. Pay TV is not going to get to scale. Now the question is, Who’s going to win? Now that we’ve proven the market, there will be new entrants. Most have big balance sheets. We’re heading into a terrible economic climate. This is a business that requires significant capital and really big, brave bets on building the next generation of media businesses. There are 600 million people in Southeast Asia with a mobile phone and a mobile broadband connection. So whoever wins is going to have a multi-billiondollar business. But it will require significant investment over the next few years to get there. That’s at the macro level. At the content level, it’s all about local. We’ll do about 90 local original productions this year. I think 30 will go well, 30 are interesting, 30 are crazy bets! The industry is in a learning phase. The culture becomes, How do you learn and evolve as markets change? As customer expectations change, how do you continue to iterate?

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