The attraction of watching TV on demand and enjoying the same American drama serials the next day have caught the attention of Singapore’s television buffs in 2010, but couch potatoes’ long-held interest in linear, free-to-air programming still appears strong. MediaCorp, the country’s sole free-to-air TV broadcaster, said it remains the dominant broadcaster in the country, with 70 per cent of the prime time TV share this year. Quoting numbers from research firm Kantar Media, Chang Long Jong, MediaCorp’s deputy CEO for TV, said he remained confident of free-to-air’s reach, even as rival pay-TV operators turned up the heat with better offerings. From July to September, SingTel grabbed 25,000 new subscribers for its mio TV service, bringing the total customer base to 245,000. At the same time, StarHub lost 4,000 subscribers, likely due to its loss of live English football matches to SingTel, but still boasted a sizeable 537,000 customers on cable TV. Together, the two pay-TV operators have been busy bringing in new channels and offering innovative offerings. StarHub, for example, started delivering an on-demand karaoke service in January, while SingTel ramped up its American drama lineup, with some episodes available the day after they are broadcast in the United States. Even as they sign up for pay-TV, however, Singapore’s free-to-air audience appears to be keeping their gaze fixed with MediaCorp’s programming. As many as three million of the country’s five million residents tune in daily, according to the Nielsen Media Index 2010. Some 1.1 million viewers tuned in to Channel 5 (Ch5) to watch the opening ceremony of the Youth Olympic Games hosted in Singapore in August. Meanwhile, the Star Awards, a show aimed at unearthing new TV talent, garnered 1.7 million viewers on Channel 8 (Ch8). Going forward, the Englishspeaking Ch5 will focus on both original content and same-day reality programs and sports events, said Chang, adding that a locally-made police drama and two comedies, including parody The Noose, have been penciled in for 2011. As for Mandarin-based Ch8, the focus will be on local productions, while the other Mandarin channel, Channel U, will continue to broadcast both local and popular Asian programmes, he said. Hardly a surprise then, the top two programs on Ch8, drama series Together and With You, had a reach of close to a million viewers. “On Channel 8, original local productions with strong Singaporean flavour and connection will be next year’s key drivers,” said Chang. Online forays The company is, however, not turning a blind eye to the growing popularity of ondemand TV. XinMSN.com, a website launched with Microsoft in February, now showcases what the broadcaster calls “catchup TV”. Viewers can watch past episodes of, say, The Noose online if they missed the live broadcast on the telly. Chang said this has helped reach younger viewers who do not watch linear programming: “It has helped to sustain the buzz generated by the free-to-air telecast and the online streams have been growing.” As it launched the advertisingdriven XinMSN, MediaCorp closed a paid online video service it had run previously, called MobTV, where viewers could watch past episodes of its productions. High-def grows This year also saw more highdefinition (HD) viewers hop on to the free-to-air platform, according to figures from Kantar Media. MediaCorp’s sole HD channel, HD5 gained 36 per cent more viewers in the first six months of this year, likely due to viewers buying new and cheaper HD sets. Yet, the company is tightlipped about any more such channels besides the HD version of its regular Ch5. Much of its original productions – the most popular ones on Ch8, for example – are not shown on HD yet. In contrast, Hong Kong’s, free-to-air broadcaster TVB has been beaming its original productions in HD on its HD Jade channel since 2007. New year challenges Competition looks to be heating up next year, as SingTel and StarHub gain more momentum with a new fibre optic-based broadband network, currently being deployed. As homes get wired up, the new network is expected to drive overall prices down and boost Singapore’s residential broadband takeup. This enables the likes of SingTel and StarHub to upsell more pay-TV programs to their broadband subscribers, especially by bundling pay-TV as part of a triple- or quad-play mix. SingTel, for example, shows live Barclays Premier League matches over mobile phone, a home computer and on its mioTV set-top box. The pay-TV market, and indeed the TV market in the country, could shift in yet another direction in 2011, when the government regulator finally puts its content-sharing rules in action. Unveiled in March this year, the Media Development Authority’s (MDA’s) rules will enable rival pay-TV operators to share or wholesale content on each other’s platforms, replacing the previous practice of bidding up exclusive content and passing on the costs to viewers. The rules, bitterly opposed by lobby groups such as CASBAA this year, are still to be tested, and new players such as Singapore’s number three telco, M1, which entered the pay-TV fray with a small lineup just last month, could be the first to see how liberal the market could turn out in the coming months. For a free-to-air broadcaster like MediaCorp, the extra competition could work either way. It may force viewers to split their time on the telly, or it could just make people consume more content, as they appear to have done this year.