Asia’s new breed of streaming platforms is moving beyond on-demand, expanding offerings to include linear channels. This is a clear bid to mean more to broader audiences everywhere, not to mention to sweeten broadband deals.

The darling of the moment is Hong Kong’s myTV Super, which added four BBC Worldwide linear brands – BBC Lifestyle, BBC Earth, CBeebies and BBC World News – to its all-screen streaming platform at the end of November 2016 along with premium drama SVOD channel BBC First.

This is BBC Worldwide’s first branded-channel/content deal with myTV Super. The company has in the past sold individual programmes to the seven-month-old platform, which is owned and operated by Hong Kong’s dominant free-TV broadcaster, Television Broadcasts Ltd (TVB). BBC Earth, BBC Lifestyle, BBC World News and CBeebies will be live streamed, with 14-day catch up on some BBC Lifestyle and CBeebies content.

The agreement rides Asia’s online/streaming/OTT boom, which may be starting to set free channel brands across Asia from the traditional cable/satellite distribution chokehold.

BBC Worldwide’s Asia executive vice president, David Weiland, doesn’t necessarily see it that way. “Our main objective is to connect where the consumers are and any platform that offers that is good news. This is an evolution, but from our perspective it’s all still part of the pay-TV universe,” he says.

myTV Super’s appetite for linear underscores a story that channel bosses have been repeating against a drumroll for sexy new on-demandoperators and a death-knell in some quarters for linear services.

The question through 2016 was: Is linear television dead? The answer: No. The question for 2017 is: How do linear services, along with everyone else, adapt to a new environment? It’s a timeless question we would have asked, if we were around, when Adam ate the apple. The answer: wait and see.

Meanwhile, linear TV is definitely not dead and all signs point to a dawning era of co-existence. Even where homes have the full range of services, linear can take up to 60% of viewership at any one time. Live Fetch TV data out of Australia backs that up, as does anecdotal experience across many of Asia’s multi-screen markets.

Linear viewing can take between 30% and 50% of viewing on Malaysia’s six-year-old online/streaming platform tonton, says Airin Zainul, Media Prima Malaysia’s group general manager for ntv7, 8TV and tonton, which now has just under six million registered users. People are still watching live football, news and entertainment online, she says,highlighting the complimentary habits Media Prima is experiencing between platforms. “When we air content first on tonton, when it lands on TV it does extremely well. When it does well on TV, catch up on tontonworks really well,” she says. RTL CBS Asia chief executive, Jonas Engwall, isalso taking an all-things-complimentary line. “I don’t think that linear is dead,” he told delegates at the ContentAsia Summit in Singapore in September 2016. “Certain peopleat certain times will prefer linear and at other times on-demand... there will be a mix of viewing over time,” he adds.

One thing is for sure. “We have to follow where customers go. We have a skinny bundle approach – two quality channels and making our content available everywhere we can,” Engwall adds.

Singtel’s head of content and advertising sales, Anurag Dahiya, who oversees a vibrant emerging mobile/streaming business along with the regular pay-TV/IPTV platform, also thinks linear is alive and well. “We’ve seen healthy growth in linear viewing... we’re not writing it off by any means,” he says.

On the contrary, Singtel has added linear channels over the past two years, and viewership is up. This has run alongside a concerted effort to improve the user experience and recommendation page. “We have seen that recommendation works, not just for on-demand but for linear TV as well,” he says.

What about the chord-cutting that could, according to Media Partners Asia’s (MPA) forecasts, shave up to 50,000 subs off Singapore traditional pay-TV numbers in 2016? Dahiya doesn’t think the chord-cutters areshifting online or on-demand. “Our view is that they are shifting to illegal streaming,” he says. And that in some way is a pointer for “us to adapt to that environment and stream our live services aswell. At some point, we will have to get into a pure OTTmodel, but that doesn’t necessarily change the nature of the service,” he adds. “There’s a long tail of linear viewing and a large number of people who prefer linear. They don’t want to be hunting around for stuff,” he says.

Jeremy Kung, Telekom Malaysia’s EVP New Media and CEO, TMNet, reframes the conversation as the choice between screens. “Big screens are still relevant today, and I strongly believe they are here to stay. Whether the content is linear or on-demand doesn’t matter,” he says, highlighting product and delivery diversity. “We have both linear and OTT, and at the same time we are working with OTT players in the market... it’s a simple strategy. They need distribution and a billing mechanism andwe are able to provide that.” Execution is not so simple. “The industry is still talking aboutrights for different platforms,” Kung says, pushing for a change. “Content wants to be made available everywhere. Let’s kill some of the pirates out there by looking at rights horizontally and making content available across the board,” he adds.

For all this, there is no getting away from the slowing rate of growth in pay-TV markets across much of Asia in the past 24 months, and the meaning-of-life questions are a long way from being answered.

As Media Partners Asia vice president, Aravind Venugopal, said during the ContentAsia Summit 2016, “perhaps the industry needs to take a closer look at what they are selling to consumers? Are consumers still interested in pay-TV? Have they reached a tipping point? Are they looking around at other entertainment options because of price or because of the offering? Are they finding options outside of the traditional ecosystem? There is room for growth, but why isn’tpay-TV growing?” The was before new streaming platformsstarted adding live linear channels. What happens next? That’s one to watch in 2017.

Published on ContentAsia's Issue Six 2016