Tuesday, 18th March 2008

INFO BOX

TV Spotlight on China
Television Asia, March 2008

China is the world’s largest TV market by audience and fast becoming one of the world’s most prodigious producers of TV content. Total annual production of TV programs reached 2.6million hours in 2006, an annual increase of 2.51%, according to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television Development and Research Center. Total airtime reached 13.6million hours, up 4.62% on 2005.

TV penetration reached 96% of the population by the end of 2006, with around 139million households connected to the national cable grid through 3million kilometers of cable, and 12million households could receive digital signals. The total number of cable TV users jumped to 143million households by the end of the first half of 2007, an increase of four million households over the start of the year.

However, the industry remains largely shielded from the outside world due to government restrictions on foreign content imports, as well as the activities with which international media groups can be involved. The roll-out of pay-TV and offi cial IPTV services has also fallen well short of expectations. Content available on Chinese TV is heavily influenced by government policy.

TV news and current affairs programs remained a prime time television mainstay in 2007. On average, Chinese audiences watched 22.8 minutes of news programs per day, a 12.95% share of daily viewing time, according to the CSM Media Research/STVF China TV News Report 2007-2008.

General news accounted for 58% of news viewing with entertainment news reaching a 10% share. The 2006 World Cup, the upcoming Beijing Olympics and other international sports events also resulted in an increase in sports news.

Chinese television is now gearing up to broadcast the biggest celebration of its national and regional cultures ever during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. TV drama, documentary and animation producers are being challenged to produce programs on Chinese landmarks and the Olympics to mark the Games. It will be a seminal year for the content production sector for all genres - from news and current affairs to entertainment - as producers prepare to broadcast spectacles of unprecedented scale and scope, as well as every minute of the Games.


SPORTS SHORTS

* Galleon Holdings plc, intellectual property owner and developer, inked an exclusive co-prod deal with Guangdong TV Sports Channel and Football Association Premier League (FAPL) club, Chelsea Football Club, for multi-platform reality soccer talent search show Super Soccer Star. The show is going into production and will air on Guangdong TV Sports Channel in April 2008. The multi-platform programme will generate revenue from sponsorship, advertising, mobile participation, live events, online activities and branded merchandise. Super Soccer Star (13x30”) will provide a mix of football and entertainment as well as interactive content. It aims to promote football skills and fitness to the teenage group and to cater to family peak-time viewing. Soccer schools and coaches across Guangdong province will send their best players to participate in the competition. TV Asia, 10th Mar 2008

* Nimbus Sport International Pte Ltd today announced an exclusive deal with CamGSM, Cambodia’s largest telecommunications provider. CamGSM has acquired on-demand mobile clip rights to the Barclays Premier League in Cambodia for three seasons from 2007/2008 to 2009/2010 on its mobile network Cellcard. This is the first time that sports video clips will be available on mobile phones in Cambodia. CamGSM will offer near live content as well as highlights and previews of all Barclays Premier League matches. Cellcard football fans across Cambodia can access the clips via Cellcard’s STK menu or visit www.cellcard.com.kh/mobile. Singapore-based i-POP Networks Pte Ltd, Asia’s leading mobile services and provisioning company is assisting in the operation and expansion of the mobile clips service for CamGSM. Sports e-Media, 17th Mar 2008

* Neo Sports, the cricket-focused sports television channel owned by Nimbus Sport, has launched a campaign entitled ‘India’s Race to No 1 – Test Cricket,’ as the Indian cricket team presses to take over from Australia as the world’s number-one-ranked team. As well as showing live coverage of India’s matches, Neo Sports plans extra programmes such as Extra Cover, which aim to ‘give an insight on the finer nuances of the game as well as cover the fun aspect of it.’ The broadcaster is considering an international expansion plan that could involve the channel being distributed in USA, the UK, Germany and France. Neo Sports is an all-cricket channel focused on Nimbus’ acquisition of the rights for Indian cricket in a four-year deal with the Board of Control for Cricket in India that was worth an initial $612.5 million and which expires in 2010. Sportcal.com, 17th Mar 2008

* People Infocom (Mauj Mobile), which is an end-to-end managed services provider, has created a new-age 3G portal for Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco). The portal, launched under the brand name O, has been specifically designed for Batelco's recently unveiled 3G network. People Infocom is responsible for developing, designing, hosting and maintaining O. This next-generation portal has an English and Arabic version. The rich user interface provides the consumer ease of content discovery, in turn assuring the operator of customer stickiness, resulting in generating higher ARPUs (average revenue per user). Indiantelevision.com, 17th Mar 2008

* Irdeto, has announced that TrueVisions UBC, Thailand's leading digital pay-TV operator, has extended the functionality of its existing Irdeto Digital TV solution to secure its new PVR (personal video recorder) product. TrueVisionsUBC is the largest subscription-based television provider in Thailand, offering over 80 channels covering infotainment, news, entertainment and sports programmes such as English Premiership matches. The Irdeto PVR solution, delivered in collaboration with Humax and OpenTV, will enable TrueVisions' subscribers to experience enhanced features like content recording andplayback and live pause. Subscribers will be able to record up to 140 hours of TV programmes, control live TV the way they want, and access interactive TV services such as the Football Live Score service and a variety of games.The PVR will be available to both TrueVisions UBC satellite and cable subscribers in Thailand. ATV, 18th Mar 2008

* More than 130 million people watched all or part of the 2007 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament on TV. The 2007 championship game drew a healthy 40.3 million, per CBS Sports, New York. Under an 11-year, $6 billion deal with the NCAA that runs through 2014, CBS holds all TV, radio, satellite, digital, Internet and home video rights to the event. CBS is getting about $85,000 per 30-second TV spot for day games and $350,000 for early round and prime time games, per industry analysts. That jumps to about $1.4 million per 30 seconds for the two Final Four games on April 5 and the championship game on April 7. CBS said its TV ad revenue will top $450 million, up from $400 million in 2007. Brandweek,16th Mar 2008

* Horseracing network TVG Broadband has signed a deal to make a selection of its short form video content available on Hulu.com. TVG will provide racehorse and personality profiles, analysis, handicapping information and features covering horseracing throughout the US and around the world. Hulu, which was founded in March 2007 and is a joint venture owned by NBC Universal and News Corp. TVG, a television network and account wagering company dedicated to horseracing, provides programming to nearly 30 million households in the US and more than 20 million households overseas. Sports Media, 17th Mar 2008


MORE NEWS

India/New Media: Consolidation Predicted for India Pay-TV

India’s pay-TV sector is expanding fast helped by new DTH players entering the market. “Consolidation is inevitable,” says a new report. A study from Media Partners Asia (MPA) forecasts that India’s vibrant TV market will grow by 16% between this year and 2012. That prediction is just slightly less than the most recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report, which suggested a CAGR of some 18% over the same period.

Today’s six DTH players (Zee’s Dish TV, TataSky, Bharti, Reliance’s BigTV, Sun and Doordarshan) will have reduced to three by 2012, says MPA, although looking after a greatly expanded market of 25m DTH homes (last year’s end total was about 3.2m). ARPU might also be about to be squeezed, from Rs200 (about $5 a month) to nearer Rs180 ($4.50) as greater competition leads to lower prices per home.

“We have downgraded our estimates on subscription revenues for TV channels in India by about $1 billion because of the effects of price regulation in the medium-term as well as the increasing emphasis on lowering content spend by DTH and cable platforms due to aggressive price competition,” Vivek Couto, executive director, MPA said. The MPA study says that India’s total pay-TV market, when cable is included, will expand from 82m (at end of 2007) to reach 137m by 2012. Already testing is Reliance’s BigTV, promising it will go fully live by the end of March with an initial 100 DTH channels – and all in MPEG4 (a necessary evil because of limited transponder capacity over India). BigTV is itself predicting winning 10m subs over time, and another 15 from cable distribution. Rapid TV, World Screen, 17th Mar 2008

India/New Media: India's GSM Operators Add Nearly 6m Users in February

India's leading GSM-based mobile operators added 5.9 million users in February, about 300,000 less than in January, an industry body, quoted by a Reuters report, said. The Reuters report said Bharti Airtel, India's top mobile firm, led the pack, signing 2.3 million new users in February to take its total to 59.7 million, data from the Cellular Operators Association of India showed.

India, the world's fastest growing wireless telecoms market, had 184.7 million subscribers on nine GSM networks by end-February, the data showed, the Reuters report said. The figure does not include No. 2 operator Reliance Communications Ltd, which operates mainly on the rival CDMA platform but has a growing GSM customer base, the report said.

Reliance had added 1.6 million subscribers across both platforms in January, lifting its total to 42.6 million, the report added. In February, third-ranked Vodafone Essar, a unit of Vodafone, took in 1.4 million new users, swelling its subscribers to 42.6 million, the data showed, the report said. Idea Cellular, the sixth-largest operator by subscriber numbers, added 918,871 users in February, taking total users to 22.9 million users. Unlisted state-owned BSNL, the No. 4 player, added 824,284 subscribers, taking its total to 34.6 million. Aircel, controlled by leading Malaysian mobile phone firm Maxis Communications, added 251,367 users in February, half of what it added in January, the Reuters report further said. telecomasia.net, 18th Mar 2008

Vietnam/New Media: Ozura Partners with Vinamob on Mobile Games Distribution in Vietnam

Ozura Mobile, a leading international publisher and developer of mobile entertainment today announced a strategic partnership on distribution of mobile games with Vinamob Venture Company Limited- Vinamob, a leading publisher of mobile content and services in Vietnam. Vinamob was officially assigned as Master Content Provider (MCP) of Ozura to publish and distribute Ozura’s mobile games to all mobile subscribers in Vietnam market.

As part of the agreement, Vinamob will market and distribute all Ozura's highly acclaimed new games including Beijing 2008, Music Revolution, Cubix and others to mobile subscribers through its distribution network including 3 main mobile operators i.e. Viettel Mobile, Mobifone & Vinaphone, serving more than 35 million mobile subscribers. Vinamob will also sell Ozura’s mobile games directly to consumers through the Piggymob brand.

“The last three years have seen Vietnam's mobile phone market grow beyond the 8% average growth rate of the economy and registering highest growth rates of mobile users globally. We are excited about the collaboration with Vinamob to launch our new games to the market. Our partnership with Vinamob will spearhead our distribution of new and exciting mobile games in Vietnam market,” said H.E.Mah, Ozura’s Chief Marketing Officer. As per the industry experts, a 270% growth is imminent with mobile phone users swelling to almost 45.78 Million in Vietnam by 2010. Games Industry, 17th Mar 2008

Philippines/New Media: Broadcaster, IBM Sign Digital Content Deal

Technology giant IBM has secured a multimillion-peso deal to provide digital content and data storage applications to ABS-CBN, the largest broadcasting company in the Philippines. Under the agreement, both companies will collaborate on a platform to "digitize all of its content, resulting to an enhanced media content creation and management...to benefit Filipino media consumers worldwide", IBM and ABS-CBN said in a statement.

Financial details of the deal remained under wraps, but various news reports said ABS-CBN is pouring in US$4 million for the data storage component alone. The IBM data storage products will be integrated into the media asset management system (MAMS) that the IT vendor will also provide. According to Big Blue, the MAMS will allow the broadcast giant to create new services such as additional channels, Web portals and mobile downloads, "while reducing substantial costs in archiving and storage and attaining a more efficient post-production process".

ABS-CBN is expected to grow its data to about 36 percent, further requiring a new application to handle the volume of data. Zdnetasia.com, 17th Mar 2008

Asia/General: Everyone Benefits as Rugby Pushes Into Asia

Rugby is the latest sport to make a push into Asia, primarily to tap its economic potential but also to help grow the game in a part of the world that desperately needs help. With a new Asian Five Nations tournament being played in April and May and the announcement that a Bledisloe Cup match between Australia and New Zealand will take place in Hong Kong, everyone stands to benefit.

Asian players will gain valuable experience, fans get to watch quality rugby, and unions like Australia and New Zealand can tap the region’s huge sports markets.
Rugby in Asia needs the boost. Japan is the continent’s highest ranked nation at 18 and was the only Asian team to qualify for last year’s World Cup in France, where they failed to make it past the group stages.

It highlighted the gulf between them and the world’s best with the region’s other wannabees such as South Korea and Hong Kong having years of work ahead of them to be competitive globally. Japan’s New Zealand coach John Kirwan, who helped the All Blacks to win the inaugural World Cup in 1987, believes that introducing an Asian Five Nations is a crucial development to help the sport grow. The tournament will pit teams from Japan, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, South Korea and the Gulf.

“We are really excited because this year is an important year for us from a transition point of view, we want to be able to back up our performance in the World Cup,” he recently told Total Rugby Radio. “But to do that we have to keep one eye on the next World Cup so the Asian competition is great for us. We can play a mixture of old and new.”
Kirwan sees Japan, which benefits from competing in the annual Pacific Nations Cup which involves Samoa, Fiji and Tonga as well as Australia A and the Junior All Blacks, as a key cog in accelerating the game’s development.

“The game here in Japan is very old, traditional, the structures are all in place so we see ourselves as the rugby union that can really help open a lot of those doors in Asia,” he said. “Japan is very keen to host the World Cup and I think we all understand that Asia is a fundamental part in the growth of the game and really Japan is the gateway to Asia from a rugby point of view.” Japan narrowly lost the right to host the 2011 World Cup to New Zealand and now are campaigning to host the World Cup in 2015.

David Skidmore, chairman of the Arabian Gulf Rugby Football Union, said the Asian Five Nations could only benefit the sport. “The tournament can only improve players,” he told reporters. “It will make them aspire to play the likes of Japan who have qualified for every World Cup. That can only be good news for the sport here.” For Australian Rugby Union chief John O’Neill, the move to develop the game in Asia makes complete sense from an economic perspective with the Japanese sports economy one of the largest in the world. “I see a lot of Australian rugby’s future and indeed, New Zealand’s, is very much about embracing the region,” said O’Neill, who helped guide the Australian soccer team into the Asian Football Confederation. Gulf Times, 12th Mar 2008

Asia/General: Chelsea in Search for Chinese Superstar

Chelsea are to take part in a televised talent search aimed at uncovering a Chinese Frank Lampard. The London club, which is aiming to replace Manchester United as the best-supported English club in the world's most populous nation, announced on Monday that it was joining forces with regional broadcaster Guangdong TV Sports Channel to launch the search for a star.

The associated tv series will be called Soccer Super Star and will be broadcast across southern China in 13 episodes from next month.Soccer schools and coaches across Guangdong province will send their most promising 14-16 year old players to take part in the talent show. The four most promising youngsters will win a visit to Chelsea's Stamford Bridge home in west London and will have coaching at the club's academy.

Chelsea is already the official football development partner of the Asian Football Confederation's Vision China project that aims to set up 10 city leagues in China. The club's chief executive, Peter Kenyon, said: "We are delighted to be involved in such an innovative project that helps us deliver on our continuing commitment to promote grass roots football amongst youngsters in China.

"The show complements our involvement in Vision China with the AFC as well as showcasing Chelsea to a large audience and we look forward to hosting the finalists of Super Soccer Star in England." The tv series is being co-produced by British company Galleon. AFP, 3rd Mar 2008

Elsewhere/General: Pac-man's Next Fight in Las Vegas

Before his long-anticipated trip to Macau, Manny Pacquiao will stick around Sin City a bit longer. After Pacquiao fights Juan Manuel Marquez on Saturday night in their super featherweight rematch, the Filipino champion will return to Las Vegas and the Mandalay Bay Events Center in late June for his next 135-pound fight against WBC lightweight champion David Diaz, promoter Bob Arum told The Associated Press on Thursday.

If Pacquiao (45-3-2, 34 KOs) stays on his winning roll, he will fight in Macau in the fall - perhaps against new unified lightweight champion Nate Campbell, who holds the other three belts in a star-studded division after stunning Juan Diaz last week in Cancun. Pacquiao had long been expected to fight David Diaz in June in the opulent 15,000-seat arena at the new Venetian casino in Macau, the Chinese territory that surpassed the Las Vegas Strip's total gambling revenue in 2006.

Filipino fans who revere Pacquiao as a national hero are expected to pour into nearby Macau for the fight, just his second in Asia since December 2004. But Pacquiao's fans are exactly the reason Arum plans to make Pacquiao's next fight at Mandalay Bay - specifically the 2 million Filipinos living in California who liven up the Las Vegas scene on weekends when Pacquiao is in town. USA Today, 13th Mar 2008