Monty Ghai
Brandwith founder and chief executive, Monty Ghai, has begun rolling out a new slate of entertainment brands – including factual network CuriosityStream, Reuters TV, People TV and Cheddar – designed to provide a deeper, broader experience for consumers in Asia. The bundle includes both linear and on-demand services.

The first CuriosityStream linear channel in the world launched on StarHub mid-August. Ghai doesn’t think Discovery’s exit from StarHub in Singapore had anything to do with the platform’s decision to introduce CuriosityStream although the timing seemed perfect. “I would like to think that we were probably on that journey in any case regardless of what was happening behind the scenes,” he says.

The gap into which CuriosityStream stepped didn’t emerge on the day StarHub and Discovery called it quits. On the contrary. Ghai says the vacancy was created when incumbent channels “left what is the authentic factual space... [I’m] not saying that's good or bad, just saying that that happened,” he says, adding: “There’s a void in the marketplace for hardcore factual”.

Ghai bristles at any insinuation that CuriosityStream – launched by Discovery founder John Hendricks in the U.S. in 2015 as a next-generation online subscription service – is a smaller cheaper linear alternative to Discovery. “This is not about replacing linear channels” with low-cost alternatives, he insists. “It’s much more than that. It’s about being able to provide a deeper experience beyond linear as well,” Ghai says.

Brandwith’s path forward is to provide branded services to all platforms, be it pay TV platforms or OTT. With so many thousands of hours of content out there, “brands play a huge role. People are going to find the next big Disney blockbuster, they’re going to find the sports franchise... those big titles. But in terms of factual, branded services play an important part”.

Ghai’s support for a consumer-centric approach is absolute, and access to data is a basic requirement. Programmers need to be more reactive to what consumers want, he says.

Avi Himatsinghani
Rewind Networks chief executive, Avi Himatsinghani, celebrated the launch of his second channel, Hits Movies, on StarHub in Singapore on 1 October, doubling his output but absolutely 100% sticking to his long-held single-minded mantra: “‘Best of’ all in one place, making it easy for viewers to find and watch”.

Himatsinghani says the new channel “fills a clear need gap in the evolving subscription video landscape for quality, evergreen movies on the basic tier”.

Hits Movies curates blockbuster titles from multiple Hollywood studios during the 1960s to 1990s in a linear channel created to live on basic subscription packs. The October launch line up crosses a range of genres, including romance (Grease, West Side Story), action (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Terminator, The Italian Job), comedies (The Pink Panther, Trading Places), thrillers (Fatal Attraction) and Westerns (For A Few Dollars More).

Himatsinghani’s commitment to operating clearly defined, mass market basic channels kicked off five years ago with the launch of the Hits entertainment channel with Hollywood’s top series from the 1960s to the 1990s.

The issues and the questions, for him, are simple. “Is there a need gap in the market? Can we satisfy that need gap at a fair economic value? Not cheap, just fair, which adds value to the pay-TV consumer and platform partners.”

The biggest problem with the current pay-TV ecosystem is that not enough networks have asked or answered these critical questions. Himatsinghani is emphatic: “If we don’t do that, we’re dead,” he says.

Hits Movies – Rewind’s second linear channel – stands in sharp contrast to “classic” movie channels in the past, which were largely single-studio line ups that sometimes delivered what they promised and sometimes didn’t. “No matter who we are, we have to constantly live up to the promises we have made at any given time. If people tune in, they need to get what has been promised to them,” he says.

The question in his mind was never whether there was a need for the movie channel, just whether he could acquire the rights he needed and make the channel available at the right economic value.

Himatsinghani is a champion of tight effective curation, even in environments where the same content makes its way onto YouTube for free. The same Hits TV title that gets 40,000 views in Malaysia, will have less than a quarter of that on YouTube globally, he says. “It’s available for free. It’s on one of the largest on-demand platforms you can get. It’s got the best metadata, the best search capabilities and still globally it’s 4,000, 5000, maybe 10,000 views...”

Some titles work better than others on demand – “the content you know you want to demand and therefore it’s available on demand. You asked for it and therefore you get it,” Himatsinghani says.

“But in a lot of cases, factual, obviously news which is live and many other genres, you don’t know what you want but you know the theme, the mood you’re in, the playlist feel, and you want to go in and experience that. You want someone to help you with that. We’re a service that’s helping people do that,” he adds.

Hits ratings have been “quite good”, even relative to some first-run networks. “Now does it mean we are better? Maybe not.” But here’s something to think about: “A lot of the first-run audiences have moved to where on-demand works best, which is Netflix, Amazon, Hooq, iflix...”

Gregg Creevey
For the past decade, way before hashtags made communities of like interests sexy, Gregg Creevey has been talking about catering to specific interests with focused curation and clear positioning. Towards the end of September this year, viewership data from Oona/Telkomsel in Indonesia showed Outdoor by far the most-watched content. The Outdoor Channel live feed was watched for 50.5 hours over a seven-day period. The closest live competitor was watched for 5.25 hours. Outdoor Channel’s VOD channel was watched for 4.02 hours during the same seven days.

“For us, it’s all about curation,” says Creevey, co-founder and managing director of Omni Channels Asia (OCA). OCA has a deal with U.S.-based TV4 Entertainment to distribute a bouquet of linear channels in Asia. OCA currently has 40 channels – or content verticals – and by the end of next year, plans to have 100. The deal with Oona is to launch up to 30 new genre-focused channels in Indonesia in 2018/9, giving the linear/VOD bundle access to Telkomsel’s 135 million mobile customers across the country.

“The challenge for legacy brands and channels is that they have become generalists,” Creevey says. “That’s a distinct disadvantage in an environment where audiences are increasingly looking for something that’s more tightly curated as a video experience”.
Creevey is embracing the very different business model of the OTT environment. “In that environment we're looking for platforms of scale,” he says. “That gives us a lot more flexibility when it comes to the commercial model. We're no longer just limited to looking at it on a CPS or flat fee or minimum guarantee basis. There's potentially a lot more revenue at play that we can participate in.”

Access to data that some streaming platforms provide is a definite plus in building an audience-relevant product. “I can open the Oona dashboard and I can see live and historical data. I can see how many people have watched, I can see who how many are watching, what they’ve watched in minutes and hours,” he says. The same goes for Outdoor Channel’s deal with the 7plus group in Australia.

Creevey has also all but stopped talking about schedules, preferring to talk about playlists, and says consumers may begin with on-demand, but their multi-episode viewing patterns once a title is chosen mirror the linear experience.

“It was on demand in terms of how you discovered it. But in terms of how you consumed it, it was linear. So that's what leads us to the conclusion that there's value in linear if you can tightly curate it. We have playlists of video and those playlists are tightly curated around genres or interests or passions.”

One of the channels offered on Oona through OCA is Inside Outside, a venture with all3media. Creevey says similar strategic partnerships are in the works. There’s also a slate of original production coming on stream. “Some of our verticals will be made up of original content. But there is so much content out there anyway. I think there are tremendous opportunities in curating that content. There's a lot to do, a lot to play for,” he says.

Kok-Siew Yeo
Hong Kong’s PCCW Media and regional sports network beIN Sports joined forces for the first time in July this year on a co-branded channel that will offer live Spanish LaLiga coverage exclusively to Hong Kong viewers for the next three seasons until 2022/23. The long-term partnership – a first for beIN in Asia – leverages beIN’s global relationship with LaLiga, draws on LaLiga-related content coming out of central command in Doha and, critically, spreads risk.

“We have to be very mindful about what our value proposition is, about what we are bringing to the table,” says Kok-Siew Yeo, beIN’s director, distribution & partnerships (Asia).

beIN is currently in 12 markets in Asia, with traditional pay-TV services as well as a direct-to-consumer product, beIN Sports Connect. The sports brand’s biggest markets in the region are Thailand and Indonesia, where it has rights for the English Premier League (EPL).

beIN’s approach depends on specific markets. “It’s important to be flexible in this day and age and that’s the approach that we have taken to this constantly changing environment,” Yeo says.

If escalating sports rights are a major challenge, so too is the balance between original production on the ground in Asia and global collaboration. “For markets like Singapore and Hong Kong you could leverage English-language production out of [beIN HQ in] Doha. But for markets like Thailand and Indonesia local production is very important, which is what we've done,” he says.

beIN has studios in Bangkok and Jakarta creating local productions to cater to local audiences. “We adopt a very localised approach to the market,” Yeo says, adding: “As and where we think it warrants a local investment, a more localised approach to content, we have no doubt about doing that”.

Virginia Lim
Tough is as tough does for Sony Pictures Television Networks’ new Asia SVP/GM, Virginia Lim. As the global organisation restructures, Lim talks about the inevitable re-engineering of entertainment products, strengthening ties with existing partners and breaking new ground with others, as well as balancing IP/rights so that everyone along the value chain gets what they need to be viable. She doesn’t, she says, have all the answers. But she’s tough enough to ask the questions.

The new season of Asia’s Got Talent premieres in early 2019 with familiar judges, the same hosts as season two, a prime time spot on Sony Pictures Television Networks’ AXN channel, a lot to live up to with season two winner The Sacred Riana busting Facebook’s all-time global video records, and a key difference – the sponsor structure.

The idea may not be ‘new’ exactly, says Sony’s newly promoted regional SVP and general manager, Virginia Lim. “But sometimes ‘new’ means a new way of working together, a new relationship and a new mindset. There’s a lot of that going on right now.”

By necessity... and by design. “The truth remains that sponsorship and advertising remain a challenge, especially for pan-regional productions. There’s no longer one solution that can cut across the entire region. So our focus is individual markets and offering local solutions for individual sponsors.” Among other things, this involves different kinds of relationships with free-TV players in specific markets.

Lim says Sony’s new structure in Asia, which consolidates all lines of business under Ken Lo out of Hong Kong, makes a big difference to the channels she operates – AXN, Animax, Sony Channel, Sony One and Gem. For one, it means she has greater access to rights. “And with that we can be a bigger, better partners to all the operators,” she says.

“No matter what part of the business you are in, we all face the need to reinvent and change... the linear business model cannot stay the same because no one can survive in that environment.”

Original production, clearly, remains a priority. That includes shiny floor shows as well as original IP. And she remains committed to day-and-date Hollywood studio titles.
Partnerships, including the Gem JV with Japan’s top commercial broadcaster, Nippon TV, are helping to negotiate better rights. Success stories include on-ground event in Hong Kong with Japanese boy band Hey! Say! Jump! from notoriously picky Japanese agency Johnny’s. Negotiations took three years.

“I talk a lot about how we have to start looking at different ways to work. And of course rights is everything. It’s about what rights you can provide so that our operators can also compete with their OTT competitors. But above and beyond that, I also believe in being able to bring some money-cannot-buy experience to the viewers... with that you establish your own value in this ecosystem”.

Leena Singarajah
New leadership at A+E Networks in Southeast Asia/Australia means a switch in approach and focus on, well, everything in the toughest linear environment that channels in the region have ever faced. Southeast Asia/Australia managing director, Leena Singarajah, outlines what she’s thinking and doing to reshape products and energise activity around consumer brands, starting with Lifetime.

Lifetime Asia refreshes on 1 November, redefining its audience and reshaping the brand as a starting point for broad scrutiny of everything A+E Networks has been doing in the region. Talking about new directions since becoming MD for Southeast Asia and Australia in June this year, Leena Singarajah says “as with everything, as consumption habits change, as audience changes, where people go to consume content changes”. While the product remains strong, “there’s a need for us to look at it again and ask whether we going in the right direction.”

The approach has been a “digital” one, taking an audience-first view and a hard look at available data, and defining a destination for a very specific type of woman – a real woman, who she is, what she does and wants – in Southeast Asia. “We’re not throwing everything away... There’s a great foundation out there to work from. We’re just fixing the funnels.”

The general direction for Lifetime Asia is towards lifestyle. “Many other people do general entertainment better than we do and they will continue to do that,” she adds. “What we can do is provide a destination for women to be inspired, informed, enriched and validated”. Much like hashtags have done for curating themes, the new Lifetime will be built around thematic instead of content pillars.

Local production may be part of the mix, and commissions are less about how much than about what makes sense. “We need to be locally relevant, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be a local production. Or long form... The format, the subject matter, really depends on what the audience is looking for from us.”

An online angle is a critical piece. The initial digital audit is under way, building upon a foundation already in place to expand the business beyond linear subscription. The strategy is to create digital originals, “not just taking cutdowns but really thinking about who our audience is... we can’t be all things to everyone so we need to decide who that audience is and go after them. What we do on digital might not end up being the same thing as what we do on TV and that’s actually okay.”

Singarajah is betting that the future will be made of multiple devices – including TV sets – and multiple access points. “It’s our job to create the content in the length and the form people want. We are not saying that linear is no longer relevant.’

A deeper look at A+E’s other brands in Asia – History, Crime & Investigation, H2, FYI – will follow. “As a matter of hygiene we need to go through and look at all of those brands even if it’s to validate that ‘yes we’re doing the right thing’.”

What the final product, or suite of products, looks like is still a work in progress. Will it include a streaming app with a telco? A more robust YouTube channel? A Facebook stream? “It could,” Singarajah says, “be any of those things or all of those things.”

Published in ContentAsia's Issue Five 2018, 4 October 2018