▶ Upgraded story-telling, especially out of Indonesia and Thailand and, of course, out of India, which has taken to the premium series space as if born to it, even if some predictions from the best in the industry are that it will take another five years at least before Indian TV dramas are magnificent enough to travel widely around the world. Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore are giving their all to push quality, focusing on domestic audiences, hoping for the best from whatever regional/international partnerships they can forge, and furiously selling rights to streamers who need lots of local IP while they ramp up their own production.

▶ Ongoing surprises from the subscription on-demand/SVOD environment as distribution shape-shifts, alliances between programmers and platforms evolve, direct-to-consumer remains more difficult than many realised, and the industry figures out that, sometimes, what consumers say they want and what they will do given the right offer/price are entirely different. In Singapore, for instance, people value discounts more than they do content, which comes third on the priority list, according to Media Partners Asia/AMPD research. Who would have thought?

▶ LGBTQ+ stories aren’t going back into the closet in Asia. The absolute opposite is happening, and streamers are standing their ground on censorship. Most recently iQiyi followed Netflix into “take-down” territory, choosing to remove titles like Thai original, Kinnporshe The Series La Forte, from Singapore rather than chop bits out. If that was even possible. Star Hunter Entertainment’s BL series, Big Dragon, recently dropped on iQiyi; same, same on the Singapore release. iQiyi says the titles will go back up after the platform has finished installing censorship software that allows users to activate access controls one title at a time. So let’s see. Our bet is that Prime Video, Disney+, Paramount+, Apple TV+ and others will stand their ground too. Given global demands for diversity and inclusion, imagine if they didn’t.

▶ Korea is already on a roll…now determined, more than ever, to be “international”; what those stories look like remains to be seen, but the result they’re after? Squid Game-type performance, of course. 2 billion+ hours viewed make The Squid ultra-tough to beat though. Our bet is that (other than Squid Game 2, which is on its way) the Asian show that will topple the Netflix original will also have its roots in Korea, although, with all the new production alliances being forged and strengthened, the next Asia-focused hit may well have as much outside involvement as it does Asian. Meanwhile, even Netflix has come nowhere close to Squid Game’s record global viewing hours. From Asia, All of Us Are Dead is close to 660 million and Extraordinary Attorney Woo, which was still on the top 10 as we went to press, is around 657 million (See page 68/69). What we definitely don’t think will happen across the rest of the industry is Netflix-style transparency on consumption. But here’s the thing: if anyone was hitting those kinds of streaming numbers, we are pretty sure we would be hearing about it. So...  

▶ Producers – led by Korea – will be bolder about rights negotiations. It’s already happening, forcing global streamers to stand down (or at least back off) from their all-rights-or-none stand. Of course it’s a good idea for production houses to share in the spoils of success. It’s also way too easy to judge creators for not being more balsy up front; if you had been trying to make Squid Game for 10 years, and everyone had said no until Netflix came along, what would you have done? Lesson learned. Moving on... the blurring of what’s a true original and what’s a licensing deal with a dollop of ego and an executive producer credit in exchange for some level of exclusive window will continue. Does anyone care? The notion of ‘original’ is all so murky and devalued by now, so maybe not. Or not anymore. What’s already happening is a patchwork of rights where platforms take what will earn them the most loyalty/paying subs and let others have the rest.

▶ Formats in Asia fared a whole lot better in 2022 than they did in 2021, with a 30% rise in the number of formats on air or commissioned in the first six months of this year compared to 1H 2021 (source: ContentAsia’s Formats Outlook). Full year 2022 numbers won’t be in until early 2023, but there is reason for optimism driven by higher-value drama projects such as Korea’s Flower of Evil adaptation in India – a first for the market – and All3Media’s Liar by Min Lim’s Double Vision for Astro in Malaysia. Do we think there will be a 2022 or 2023 return to highs of 285 recorded in first half 2017? In a word? No.

▶ The mergers (and the fallout) we’re watching... Zee/Sony in India, scheduled to close in early 2023. So many questions and issues swirling around that one, not least of which is what streaming platform – the domestic SonyLiv or Zee5 with its global footprint – will be left standing. And then there’s Jio and Viacom, which have been cleared by India’s fair trade regulators to combine OTT forces. In Korea, domestic streamers TVing (CJ ENM) and Seezn (KT) have also been given the regulatory green light to join up; the upsized TVing is supposed to be kicking off in December 2022 with a combined paid subs market share of about 18% (13% TVing/5% Seezn), which the country’s fair trade bosses say is just fine (Netflix’s Korea share is over 38%, Disney+ has less than 6%).   

▶ Streaming has driven budgets to record highs in Asia, but it’s magical thinking to imagine the fairy dust landed on everyone equally in 2022. Or will in 2023. We think production budgets will be up, down and every which way depending on the platform. On the top end, there’s much energy going into upsizing co-production and co-funding relationships to make bigger, better shows. And then there are the lo-lo-lower budget productions, with newbie writers and social media stars loving what they think is the glamour of TV on a budget of like US$10,000 an hour or something. Imagine that. Right now, spending on premium drama in Indonesia is topping out at about US$270,000 per episode for very nice drama. At pretty much its lowest, Korea is double that (Extraordinary Attorney Woo cost about US$600,000 per episode; Squid Game cost US$2.5 million per episode). Average Taiwan drama budgets are about US$300,000 an hour. In Southeast Asia, drama still gets made in Malaysia for RM100,000/US$22,000 an hour or less; Singapore doesn’t bat an eyelid at S$75,000/US$55,000 an hour, rising to S$200,000/US$146,000 an hour; and the Philippines delivers at between US$40,000 and US$80,000 an hour. Whether or not that’s enough depends on who you talk to. And that’s one thing we don’t think will change in 2023.


Published in ContentAsia's December 2022 print magazine