Two years after relaunching its Asian channel in Hong Kong on PCCW’s nowTV in 2006, global French-speaking network TV5MONDE passed the 30,000 residential subscribers mark at the end of October 2008. TV5MONDE originally launched in Hong Kong on i-Cable in August 2002 in the 12-channel international tier, reaching 8,200 subscribers in the summer of 2006; the channel then switched to nowTV. Comments Alexandre Muller, managing director, Asia, “I am very proud of our results on now-TV because it confirms what I have been saying to the operators for a while: our potential audience is much wider and diversified than just the French-speaking community. As a matter of fact, French native speakers are estimated to account for about 3,000 to 3,500 households in Hong Kong, or a mere 10-12 per cent of TV5MONDE’s local subscribers. But above all, it shows that our strategy to shift from 10 years of free-to-air to pay-TV is slowly paying off, and reinforces our brand image of an exclusive channel delivering a unique value proposition. Our figures in Japan are now on the same path; it is definitely very encouraging for our future developments on other IPTV platforms in major markets such as Korea and Malaysia,” added Muller.