3 September 2014: ProductionAsia’s biggest production news at the moment is Astro’s commitment to 18,000 hours out of Pinewood Iskandar Malaysia Studios over five years. It’s not necessarily new hours, more like a shift of about 40% of Astro’s current production out of Kuala Lumpur. But the platform has significant ambitions to up relevance and there’s no doubt that the massive facility just over the border from Singapore will drive output across the board.FormatsAsia’s Got Talent is a go. The only thing the industry is waiting for is the official announcement, the date and who the broadcaster is (most bets are that it’s AXN, but AXN’s not saying anything and neither is FremantleMedia). Astro chief executive Rohana Rozhan confirmed during her address at the signing of the Astro Productions/Pinewood Iskandar agreement that the company is finalising a deal with FremantleMedia on the big-budget production. The other big one for 2015 is Asia’s Next Top Model on Fox International Channels’ Star World. We hear there may be a new production team involved, but nothing official yet.SingaporeWord on the street is that Singapore’s monopoly broadcaster MediaCorp has brought in some heavy-hitting international know-how to execute a resurrection master plan that will – if it works – breathe new life into English language free-TV service Channel 5. No details have been made public yet.ThailandThe growth of attractive, vernacular content on free satellite (Freesat) platforms in Thailand “remains the most disrup- tive competitor to pay-TV”, Media Partners Asia says. What about the merger between pay-TV platforms GMM Grammy and CTH? Won’t alter the market’s fundamen- tals. The pair lost a combined US$140 million last year and even together have “modest scale”, MPA says.Issue Three 2014