"I'm sure someone else would have done it if I hadn't... But I'm glad I took that step". - Mongol TV's chief executive Nomin Chinbat on her first major programming strategy decision after taking over the free-TV station in 2012. Chinbat says she had a choice: Either to tread a tempting path and bring costs down from 10 times revenue, or forge a legal way forward. She chose legal content - and is now trying to persuade the rest of the industry to follow.Three years on, and with Mongol TV firmly in the country's top-five rating channels, fighting piracy is not the only battle Chinbat is waging in a market of three million people and 100+ channels, where every politician wants a mouthpiece... and seems to have launched one.Journalistic ethics are a big deal at Mongol TV. "We want Mongolian citizens to trust our media and know that we are reporting in a truthful and unbiased manner," Chinbat says.

"Piracy is killing our industry. There are still too many OTT platforms in Vietnam operating on a pirate model and/or don't pay content owners the right amount... We tried to work with them but we don't talk the same language, so we decided to launch our own platform, working with the best studios in the world on a quality offering. If you don't have alternatives then people will pirate... Vietnamese viewers will pay a small amount of money to have a much better - and legal - experience." – BHD/Vietnam Media Corp co-founder Ngo Thi Bich Hanh on the standalone branded online VOD service company rolls out from mid-2015.

"Particularly in Asia, the challenge is working with and convincing international content owners on issues such as pricing... We need a lot more innovation to stimulate the market and combat piracy to generate incremental revenues for everyone in the industry." - Peter G. Bithos, chief executive officer, Hooq, on the biggest challenges over-the-top (OTT) platforms in Asia are facing.

"I had watched America's Next Top Model and it looked easy. To be honest, when I had the licence in my hand I didn't know where to begin. It was totally different from Do Re Mi, even though they are both reality shows". - Vietnam's Multimedia JSC founder, Trang Le, on her early experiences with Vietnam's Next Top Model, now in season five but not before she almost lost the rights because CBS Studios in the U.S. felt she wasn't properly prepared. An 11th-hour trip to the U.S. to experience first hand what she wasn't doing right saved the show. Trang has since expanded her fashion angle to "Project Runway Vietnam", modelling agency BeU Models and Vietnam International Fashion Week. This year, she's extending the talent hunt to an older demographic with the first edition of "She's Got the Look".

"While the simulcast of U.S. programmes in Asia is not a silver bullet to combat piracy, it will boost our continued effort to offer legitimate content." - Magdalene Ew, HBO Asia's head of marketing, creative and content speaking about the decision to air U.S. series Game of Thrones season five, Silicon Valley season two and Veep season four at exactly the same time as in the U.S., with prime-time evening encores. The hiccup in the process is hard-line censors in some parts of the region, themselves struggling to balance devastating levels of piracy with regulations they've set in place and seem cautious to change. So far, censorship is winning. Like everyone else, HBO says it is committed to complying with different regulations in every market, but that means viewers won't get the shows until censors have taken their cut.

ContentAsia Issue 1, 2015