Zombies, sex workers and traditional marriage practices mark Indonesian platform Vidio’s path into a new content era. Chief content and strategy officer, Mark Francis, speaks about zones of interest, a measurement system he calls “taste TAM”, and moving from producing 14 originals a year to between 18 and 24.

Indonesian streaming platform Vidio closes 2024 with 14 original series, more competition for local talent from Netflix, less competition than expected from Prime Video, which pulled the plug on grand ambitions at the beginning of the year; and little to zero competition for local production from Disney+ Hotstar, which pretty much followed Prime Video after a big-swinging arrival in 2020. 

Vidio’s chief content and strategy officer, Mark Francis, isn’t sure that international flip-flopping on local content strategy will make life easier... or more difficult. “We are already making 15 to 16 series a year. We want to get that to between 18 and 24. That challenge is going to feel painful whether or not Disney or Amazon are vying for local resources,” he said during the 2024 ContentAsia Summit in September. “I guess at the upper level of IP, you could say that less competition makes it a little bit easier for us to breathe, but I wouldn’t overstate the effect... I don’t think those
platforms would have scaled that much to make a difference to the subscriber than I want.” 

Day to day, he is way more concerned about answering fundamental questions about streaming content. 

Francis, who has been around since the beginning of streaming as we know it, continues to ask a version of the questions now as he asked then, albeit almost 10 years later with some wins and a lot of knocks, led by: “What should a streaming show look like?”. 

Back then, when TV was all about free and drama was all about low-cost long-running soaps, consumers paid only for feature films. 

“A lot of the inspiration for what became accepted as a streaming series was inspired by feature film,” Francis says. And so he called OTT platforms’ early production efforts ‘movie minus’. 

“You take the economics of a feature film and you look at doing something in six to eight parts that has production value, that has genre, that has IP, that has A list actors, instead of the actors you see on TV. Because at the time, we needed to market ourselves, so that became the marketing for OTT. That was the beginning...” 

One pandemic, some dramatic platform fails and much industry angst later, Francis is looking at a streaming slate that he’s as happy with as he has ever been for the biggest platform in a market with scale. And he’s working with some of the people he met way back when, producers he describes as partners “in my early experiments”.    

“It’s been nine, very hectic months trying to figure it out again,” he says of this latest job as chief content and strategy officer for Vidio, the streaming brand of Indonesia’s sprawling Emtek Group. 

Vidio has 4.3 million paying subscribers, including customers who come in through telco bundles.   

Emtek’s free-TV channels gives Vidio access to a rich vein of mass market content. Premium sports rights adds appointment viewing and subscription revenue. Part of Francis’ remit is to build up a hyper-local scalable premium entertainment business. 

Francis’ focus is on subscribers who come in direct rather than through bundles. “How do we innovate for them?” he asks. 

There is no “secret sauce, but I do believe there are ingredients”, Francis says. “If you look at taste as sort of zones of interest you will find that there are certain common ingredients. The key is to make that fresh whilst keeping it familiar, which means you’ve got to weed out the ingredients that are irrelevant. This might be a format, it might be a tone... and then you combine the ingredients in different ways to provide uniqueness... That’s a key combination. So I would say there are certain ingredients and we’re getting better at identifying what those are.” 

Understanding the reason people pay for the service is very important, Francis says. And then you compliment that – carefully. “Men like action and they like football. But if you only think that way, then you are going to start to repeat the same format. But if you look more deeply at where their viewership crosses over, you can start to spread that into, for instance, sexy comedy”. And horror. 

Francis talks about a version of horror that is entertaining and inclusive, with stories and characters deeply anchored in local lore and communities. Which brings him to "Zona Merah", Indonesia’s first zombie drama (that anyone can remember). 

"Zona Merah", which premieres on 8 November, is inspired by a true story about a mayor who kept neighbours in a prison under his house. The eight-part series, which blends true crime with urban legend, is about a journalist and a female laborer who unite to uncover the truth that will bring down a corrupt governor as the rapidly multiplying universe of the ‘undead’, guided by their acute sense of smell, close in. 

Written and directed by Sidharta Tata ("Pertaruhan: The Series") with  Fajar Martha Santosa for Screenplay Films, "Zona Merah" stars Aghniny Haque, Maria Theodore, Andri Mashadi, Lukman Sardi, Haru Sandra and Devano Danendra. Tata said in early publicity that the series “marks a new leap in my creativity as a director and writer”. 

Early signs that Vidio’s risk on an untested genre might pay off emerged on social media. Two days after movie review influencer site, WatchmenID, commented on the teaser released in September, the clip had 400,000 organic views on X, rising 30% to 520,000 views in 11 days. Series creators were over the moon at the responses, including more than 1,000 comments about the teaser on channels such as USS – Feed. 

"Zona Merah" is part of a strategy to build out “zones of interest” among Vidio’s paying subscriber base as well as broadening reach into Indonesia’s heartlands. As part of this approach, Francis has coined the phrase “Taste TAM”. It’s his content-appropriate adaptation of the “addressable market” term so beloved by investors. 

Ramadan special, teen drama "Santri Pilihan Bunda", which premiered in March 2024, is also part of Vidio’s new originals era. 

The series is based on a Wattpad story about a modern, slightly rebellious, liberal young woman presented with an arranged marriage proposal by her eager parents. “It went absolutely gangbusters. We saw audiences that we never seen coming to the service,” Francis says. Season one was in the top five shows of all time on Vidio. Season two returns in 2025 with another eight episodes for a total of 16.  

"Santri Pilihan Bunda" supports the commitment to portraying local life in Indonesia. “My point to the producers is that for the audience, this show is about them and their lives, not about religion. Why shouldn’t we dramatise this? We shouldn’t be sitting in an ivory tower avoiding certain subjects,” Francis says. 

The third title, which returned for a second season in June this year, spins to the complete opposite end of the spectrum. "Open BO Lagi" is a sexy comedy built on a Jakarta urban tradition of “booking out” sex workers. The show has been a blockbuster for Vidio.  

Francis says "Open BO Lagi" is “yet another example, of where can you find these sort of unexploited zones of interest in culture... And the same time, not offend everybody”. 

"Open BO Lagi: Semakin Panas, Semakin Ganas" is about Gina, who is trying to help her family, and politician Billy, who faces issues with his fiancée.

Earlier this year, director Monty Tiwa described season two, produced by Amadeus Sinemagna, as all about “pushing the envelope in terms of storyline, acting, visuals... because we realised in season one we hadn’t gone far enough”.

“Open BO covers quite a range of topics; most are pretty sensitive in terms of sensuality and what not. It’s quite a challenge for us to portray some scenes, while at the same time asking ourselves, ‘did we go too far, can we push it a little bit more’,” he said, adding: “It’s basically finding that balance to make it work with the audience and ensuring it will be allowed to be shown on screen.” 

While he’s happy with the three tentpole 2024 titles, Francis is still a way from declaring success. 

“It’s one thing to add these big premium six- or eight-part series to the platform. It’s another thing to build a habitat so that audiences stay,” he says. By ‘stay’, he means become so integrated into viewers lives that they stop thinking about the subscription. “It’s just always right there,” he says. 

Can he get there with six- or eight-episode series? The answer is “evolving... we have some pretty interesting plans. And, yes, it’s going to affect everything we do, from writers’ rooms to the way we tell stories”. 

What he doesn’t want is for consumers to see Vidio like a theater, “where you pay, watch and leave”. 

“As we mature, we need to start to separate the purpose of content that gets people through the door and the content that makes them stay. Which means we need to start to explore what TV really looks like in a streaming environment”. 

One possible route involves more character-driven stories. Perhaps even procedurals, “which is unheard of for streaming in many of these markets”. 

“We already have these in a way – it’s called free-to-air TV. The question is how do you move this into streaming? How do you close the gap between the 10 million people that watch a soap opera every night and this significantly smaller number, but still a good number, who are willing to pay for something like "Zona Merah". For me, the challenge remains bringing those middle/mass free-TV audiences over to pay, which would create the beginnings of something genuinely sustainable.” 

▶ Published in ContentAsia's Oct/Nov 2024 Magazine