Thailand’s Workpoint TV is the poster company for digital broadcast success, with a firm place in the country’s top three mass-market channels, a commitment to fast-track production infrastructure upgrades, and a clear view of where it wants to fit in the country’s entertainment universe.

The secret sauce? Almost three decades of good, old-fashioned top-rating, entertainment content production for the country’s analogue broadcasters. Plus wide and deep connections to brands and sponsors cemented through years and years of selling its own airtime inventory.

Eighteen months after launching its first digital terrestrial (DTT) channel, Workpoint TV had climbed to third place in the ratings after long-time analogue mass-market leaders Channel 7 and 3.

Workpoint Entertainment chairman Phanya Nirunkul said in mid-September that Workpoint TV had broken even in June this year, way earlier than its original projection of five years.

In the three months to the end of September this year, Workpoint TV’s revenue was, at THB536.7 million/US$15 million – 207% higher than the same quarter last year. Ratings were up 332% – to 1.1 – since its first broadcasts, which gives Workpoint third place overall.

“We were first in the TV business in Thailand for 26 years, so Thai audiences know us very well,” Workpoint Entertainment’s chief operation office, Chalakorn Panyashom, told delegates at this year’s ContentAsia Summit in Singapore in September.

As do advertisers. Thailand’s block-time system means companies like Workpoint have long bought slots and been involved in monetising their own commercial airtime.

“We know how to find advertising,” Panyashom says, adding that Workpoint’s advertisers have followed the company on its digital terrestrial broadcast path.

The logic is not complicated. “It depends on your content, your ratings and your market share... this is the very simple way to do business in Thailand,” he says.

At the same time, he acknowledges Thailand may have too many free-to-air channels chasing too few advertising dollars.

At last count, the country had about 200 free-TV services serving about 23 million homes. The death knell has already been rung for DTT wannabes such as Thai TV, which pulled its two channels off air at the beginning of November 2015. Others are taking action against regulator, the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC), for allegedly failing to ensure a smooth migration to digital.

Workpoint, recognising the challenges, is unfazed. After years spent producing up to 15 hours a week for other channels, Thailand’s DTT environment, whatever the challenges, opened fresh areas of opportunity.

Workpoint received its commercial DTT license for a standard definition variety entertainment service in 2014 at a cost of THB2,355 million/US$66 million. The channel is one of 24 new commercial DTT services the Thai government green lit all at once. That’s in addition to the dozen or so licenses awarded to public service/non-commercial stations. The jury is still out on the long-term viability of so many new services. Industry expectations are that, at the most, 10 of the 24 commercial channels will survive. Few – if anyone – thinks Workpoint won’t be among those left standing.

Workpoint’s activity in the DTT space includes a leap in production capacity to between 30 and 40 hours a week. The company has further plans to increase drama and variety content by the end of this year, and to continue to explore sports.

In addition, it has earmarked THB200 million/US$5.6 million for upgrading facilities and content in 2016, including seven new studios that will bring the total number of studios to 16.

Workpoint says it expects its digital business to grow by 15% to 20% a year over the next five years, despite fierce competition that has already left two of the newly launched commercial DTT channels for dead and others struggling.

Workpoint didn’t enter the DTT space cold, testing the market first with a free-to-air satellite channel before it committed to its DTT initiative. Panyashom says the feedback encouraged the company to proceed with its DTT ambitions.

The biggest encouragement, though, came from the ongoing success of its productions. These include programmes such as long-running game show, Ching Roi Ching Lam, which Workpoint shifted to its own channel from Channel 3 in the middle of 2015.

This content-first focus continues to drive the channel rather than looking over its shoulder at the cutthroat competition. “We don’t think about other channels,” he says.

In addition to its own productions, Workpoint acquires/commissions content from third-party producers as well as local, regional and international distributors.

About 15% of the channel’s content is acquired. Programmers are not averse to pushing the envelope, acquiring, for instance, Indian drama for the first time this year. “It was a really big hit,” Panyashom says.

The approach is “content first” and source second. “We ask ‘is this good for our audience or not?’ and then we decide,” he says.

In the dawning age of cross-border collaboration, Panyashom says co-production is a possibility, perhaps in 2016.

Korean formats are an area Workpoint is likely to explore as its business expands. Panyashom says some of Korea’s plastic surgery formats may work well in Thailand. Mashing up genres – for instance mixing singing contests with quiz competitions – may also work.

Workpoint’s new endeavours come on the back of major successes, including game show Lightning Quiz, a mix of quiz and comedy that rocked ratings when it launched in June 2014. Targeting family households, the 45-minute quiz show airs weekdays from7.15pm to 8pm.

Lightning Quiz has two teams of three (two celebrities, one contestant) answer 10 tricky questions in two minutes. Anyone who answers all 10 correctly wins THB1 million/US$28,000 cash prize. The winning team plays the jackpot round for the grand prize – a new car worth THB1 million.

The Lightning Chair – a roller coaster-like mechanical chair that moves based on contestants’ answers – is the game’s highlight. “Normally a quiz show is really serious, but Lightning Quiz is really funny,” Panyashom says.

Lightning Quiz garnered a high of 4.62 TVR (more than two million viewers) on 24 March 2015, according to Nielsen Thailand data provided by Workpoint Entertainment. The iPhone app was downloaded seven million times in four months. “It’s incredible,” he adds.

On the social front, Lightning Quiz attracted more than three million YouTube views for each episode, on average, and had 102,000 Facebook page likes within four months of launching (June-Oct 2014), the highest among Workpoint-branded game/quiz show programmesduring that time.

Workpoint’s biggest international success so far has been game show format Fan Pan Tae (known internationally as The Fan). The super fan format, represented by Small World, has been adapted by TV4 in Sweden as well as by Sky 1 HD in the U.K., which aired it as The Fanatics in January this year.

Panyashom is optimistic about Thailand’s formats market, saying the new DTT channels – most of which aren’t creating their own formats – present a “big market” for international format rights holders in the short term. Medium term, channel consolidation may dampen demand, which will pick up again as the DTT environment matures.

Workpoint has also delivered the kind of branded-content experiences that confirm its place in the sponsorship discussion.

“We are very keen on sponsor-driven programmes,” Panyashom says. Workpoint, which airs at least one or two sponsor-funded shows a month, started producing ad-funded content about eight years ago. Its first ad-funded entertainment project was for a hospital. The show drove up wellness checks at the hospital, and clients from across the product spectrum clamoured for an encore.

“The hard thing is that not every product can make a TV show,” Panyashom says. “There has to be a balance between your audience and your customer,” he adds.

Drama is a major focus for the coming year, and 10 new series are being planned for 2016. Sports beckons too. A successful first experiment with Thai boxing earlier this year has encouraged channel management to put sports rights on the content investment agenda for 2016.

Panyashom says live boxing, featuring Muay Thai welterweight Buakaw Banchamek, put Workpoint TV level with market leaders BBTV and BEC. “If we have good content, audiences will respond,” he says.

Online/mobile platforms are being used to reach out to audiences and to draw them back to the TV channel, with, for instance, programming info and studio invitations.

Panyashom says mobile is a powerful promotional tool. “People watch their mobiles all the time. Even when they are eating, they are watching their mobiles... We have to draw them back to the TV and to tell them what we have on our TV station. And it has worked. Right now we have more than 10 million subscribers for our fan page and two million on YouTube.” All-screen integration is the way forward, Panyashom says. Workpoint’s TV everywhere plans are in their early stages.

Workpoint is realistic about its ability to take on Thailand’s big two broadcasters – Channels 7 and 3 – at least in 2016. Panyashom says the two leaders have about 28% and 25% audience share. Workpoint TV is at about 10%. “So there is a big gap,” he says. “Next year we will try to get to 15% market share and after that we’ll see...”.

This article first appeared in ContentAsia Issue 6, 2015, published in December 2015.