Q: When it comes to Viki, you work with many broadcasters. What conversations did you have with them in order for them to part with their content?
A: I come from both the content side and the fan side. You know, growing up in Cairo, I watched Bollywood content and didn’t even know what they were saying. So we tried to build a model that works for the fans and for the content owners alike. Conversation for them is ‘if you get the content in front of all the fans and you let them interact with that content,’ those will be the ones that open up new markets for you. So we can take the content that you have, that possibly can be draft into two, three or four countries which you typically sell into. Let’s open the next ten, twenty, thirty, forty for you.
It wasn’t easy initially to convince them that fans can create quality subtitles. It wasn’t easy to prove that the market is additive and is not cannibalising. We started proving the concept and then one broadcaster after another, producers we worked with, distributors we worked with, started adopting.
Q: Many broadcasters have started developing “players”. Then comes Viki, which feels like a competing platform?
A: It depends how you look at it. We could be in the same market with similar content. But we could also take the content they have and almost become a “catch-up” service to them. They can always have the same episode. What we can do is take that same episode, and have it in ten or twenty languages. So it’s “additive” eyeballs. We’re not really competing for the slices of the pie. What we’re looking to do for them is increase the SIZE of that pie. So you have a Korean drama in Tagalog or a Filipino drama that’s in Bahasa Indonesia or an Indonesian horror fi lm in the U.S. which we have on our syndication partner Hulu that’s in Spanish and English. If you look at who’s watching our content, just taking Korean content as an example because that’s where we started – more than 70% of people watching Korean dramas in the U.S. are not even Asian. People watching the Spanish subtitles are Caucasian. So we’re not really competing with cable channels. We’re actually opening up the other language markets for them.
Q: On the subject of fans, how did the idea of “fan-subbing” come about?
A: We started as a class project where we are trying to fi nd a way for people to learn a new language. We thought it will be fun if people can learn a language together by collaboratively subtitling or translating a piece of content. So we started initially in the project having YouTube videos where we’re linking to – until today, we work with YouTube and we’re linked to a lot of the videos they have, just as fan channels. And that concept was what had started for us. But we moved from a translation-only model to a place where we can also put fresh content behind it because we realise translations are valuable for opening up the markets.
Q: What kind of revenue model do you subscribe to?
A: We haven’t really delved into the economics. We haven’t made it public. But it’s a combination. Majority of it is basically on revenue share – whatever advertising revenue we get in. We have a syndication model where we can take our content – cherry pick the best and put in the U.S. on a place like Hulu or Netfl ix. Or, we can do an advertising model just like TV where you can see a 15 or 30 second ad up front and one every 12 to 15 minutes. Revenues that come in at the very least are defi nitely shared back with the content owners. And it’s getting to a point where it’s becoming substantial. So it’s starting to move the needle for the content owners where they see that digital can be additive. There are some deals where we have fl at fees without revenue share. So it really varies by markets.
Q: What are the concerns broadcasters have when it comes to rights issues and branding?
A: From the branding side, it’s gotten much, much better. Initially, they weren’t sure if it was just a pure fan site or this is a premium brand where they can trust the content. But now you can see we have A+E, HISTORY channel, USA, Syfy, Bravo, NBCUniversal – so that side is fi ne. What the initial concerns are – how can you take 500 fans on average and have them translate one piece of content, create 40 languages and ensure that there’s quality? Getting the content honestly wasn’t the toughest part. Getting the rights to subtitle the content was the toughest part. We built mechanisms in the process to ease some of those concerns. For example, now everything on Viki, every piece of content – be it a channel or let’s say an artist page – if there are translations on it, the channel has a manager and the manager recruits moderators from the community. The moderators and managers can lock the subtitles if they feel the quality is good so no one else can translate. So as we work with the content owners, we hear different concerns and we try and build it around the platform.
Q: Any concerns about piracy?
A: Fans want the content. If you give them the right access and the right choice, they will consume the content and they will do it the legal way. If we get translations done very quickly (if the community does it), it eats into piracy because what it does is it creates a platform where people can come watch this content in their language. So you don’t need fan-subs that are fl oating around on the torrents.
There’s always going to be a subset that want to watch it where they want to watch it, but if we build the right platform, give people what they want, where they want it and in this case also in their language, then we build a place where we can get a lot of people and give them access.
Q: Some of Viki’s content is viewed via a third-party site, like YouTube. What happens when content becomes unavailable on that platform?
A: If that content were to be taken down from YouTube or Daily Motion or some of the partners we’re linked to, it will be taken down on Viki as well. That’s not content we can monetise. If it’s embeddable-allowed on those platforms, our fans can take that code and basically link to it, and it shows up on Viki. So we don’t host that content. We simply link to it, based on the API (application programming interface) that those companies have. And those are called the fans’ channels and we let the fans go crazy with it. One of the benefi ts of that is aggregating people around that content and fi nding out what their interests will be. So our hope is to go and license that content, and get it unto the platform, or partner with content owners to get them unto the platform.
Q: One of your partners, Hulu, has produced its own content. Would Viki consider such a model?
A: We’ve actually co-produced Leiji Matsumoto’s anime Ozma out of Japan. We were producers in it. We got fi rst window and we opened it up worldwide. It was the fi rst time it was done with Japanese content. But it was almost the equivalent of licensing it so it was on that scale. We’re not producers of content. We work closely with our fans to create a platform for them and the content owners. So if we get that (original) content and that makes sense; if there were opportunities for us to look at what content we can bring on Viki uniquely – even if it means co-production – it would be something we would consider, but that’s not our focus by any stretch of the imagination today.
Q: Do content providers/ owners ask for the subtitling rights?
A: The subtitles are creative commons-protected but at the same time if the content owners have given us derivative rights, they can take the subtitles back. But only for them. So they cannot redistribute them to different platforms but they can use it for their own purposes because the actual scripts are theirs and the creative work is theirs. We don’t sell the subtitles so there is no commercial arrangement of subtitles because that’s not a model we want to get into. But the creative works that are attributed to the community go back to the content owners and even when we redistribute the content; when you see the content on say Hulu, it always says “brought to you by team XYZ, from Viki.” So we always attribute to the team (users).
Q: At this juncture, do you still feel Viki is seen as a threat to the broadcast industry?
A: I think we’re getting along really well. In fact we’re starting to prove that there is an additive play here. I talk to all the major studios every time I’m in the States. We’re having conversations of how we can make this additive and how can we make this additive at a scale. Not just sort of incremental revenues here and there or incremental eyeballs or just data that can be interesting to them. Frankly all the conversations at this point are interesting. Something is working here. How can we make this x 50, x 100, and how can there be an opportunity to work together.