3 September 2014: Analysts might not be over the moon about the short/medium term profit prospects of OTT, but there's clearly no shortage of companies in Asia willing to give multi-screen options a go. Malena Amzah spoke to 19 online/OTT platforms in the region about what they have, what they would like to have, and the biggest things they think are standing in their way. Analysts might not be over the moon about the short/medium term profit prospects of OTT, but there’s no shortage of companies in Asia willing to give multi-screen options a good go. This includes established free- and pay-TV broadcasters, who are moving lock, stock and tech barrel into non traditional delivery, leveraging the rights they own in new spaces and creating – or hoping to – original content for online services. Channels and acquisitions execs are also pushing hard for as many rights as possible, hoping to drive online viewership, engagement and revenue. What are these and their stand-alone online platform rivals most concerned about? Interviews with 19 platforms* in Asia showed that piracy is the top concern along with access to and cost of rights, and censorship, which drives users away. Priorities include presenting a simple and easy-to-use entertainment service, available everywhere with broad content choices at the right price models and designs that serve multiple user groups’ needs. Here’s what else they said...GOTVA paid multi-platform video-on-demand online service, GOTV offers drama series from Hong Kong’s Television Broadcasts Ltd (TVB). The platform is available to subscribers via web browsers and mobile iOS/Android apps. GOTV was launched by tvb.com, TVB’s online unit, on 14 January 2014, and had more than 26,000 users by end June.Available right now in... Geo-blocked for Hong Kong, with plans to “extend the service to all TVB content lovers worldwide” Targeting... Fans of TVB programmes, including drama and non-dramaPricing... Subscribers pay HK$59/US$7.60 a month or HK$499/US$64 a year. In April 2014, GOTV started offering a recurrent, open monthly contract priced at HK$59/US$7.60. The hope is to offer a pay-per-title service by the third quarter of 2014. Who’s driving the initiative... Kenneth Wong, chief operating officer, tvb.com; Wayne Lam, senior product manager, tvb.comThe offering The service is based on TVB’s 46- year-old drama archive, including 10,000 episodes from more than 300 selected dramas such as The Bund I, Legend of the Condor Heroes series and Triumph in the Skies series, etc. The promise is the opportunity to view mega stars’ and actors’ past performances. Celebrities include Chow Yun Fat, Dodo Cheng, Lydia Shum, Liza Wang and Adam Cheng. How many new titles are added each month? “For the launch, we selected about 10,000 episodes of drama, which include the all-time-favourite titles, the top five rated titles for the past 15 years, long sequels, as well as titles from the past three years. We will progressively increase the archive size in two phases: first, the current titles after the finale is broadcast; and, second, a quarterly increment of about 1,000 episodes from TVB archives. We are diligently consolidating our non-drama archives and target to provide non-drama content this year.” [Wayne Lam] What are you hoping to achieve with GOTV? “Through GOTV, we hope to bring TV lovers a new experience of watching TV. In addition to the traditional terrestrial linear broadcast channels, we facilitate users to choose their favourite titles to revise, anywhere, anytime on any de- vice.” [Wayne Lam] What would you like to add to the offering? “We are focusing on TVB dramas for now. In the short term, we will offer our non-drama titles as well and in the long term, we will seek the opportunity to offer foreign, acquired content.” [Wayne Lam] The biggest challenge... “To generalise our service to all age groups, particularly the elderly demographic. We believe that the older our customers are, the more content they are likely to revisit. So the key challenge was to consider the best user interface that is manageable (by all age demographics) and can easily be extended to cover various screens.” [Wayne Lam]Why did you call it GOTV? “Simple, easy to memorise, and with the key element ‘TV’.” [Wayne Lam] What are your take-up expectations for 2014? “As the service is new, we are closely monitoring the market in order to adjust our expectation on take up.” [Wayne Lam]The social media angle... “tvb.com already has a very strong online presence... We also rely on the different marketing platforms TVB is on (TV commercials, online, Facebook) to draw attention.” [Wayne Lam] Most-watched titles... “As expected, our all-time-favourites titles, including Triumph in the Skies series and The Greed of Man.” [Wayne Lam]The biggest surprise... “That our past titles are still high in demand.” Priorities for the next six months... “Collect market feedback, expectations and enhance our service to make it a perfect one!” [Wayne Lam]* All information and opinion was supplied by the platforms themselves and fact checked for accuracy as far as humanly possible. ContentAsia has not road-tested all the platforms and offers no opinion on how well any of them work or what the strengths and weaknesses are from a consumer perspective.Issue Three 2014