Yan-Jong Wong, Vice President, AXN Asia. “The 2010 re-imagining of the classic crime and investigation drama series Hawaii Five-0 acquired from CBS was a great success on AXN especially in Singapore and Malaysia. In Singapore, Hawaii Five-0 premiered as the no.1-rated programme in its timeslot among all English channels on StarHub, beating the next closest competitor by 20 per cent. The second episode of the series rated even higher and broke the record to become the top programme of the year not just on AXN, but among all premiering English drama series in 2010 on StarHub. As a network, SPE Networks – Asia buys consistently around the year to ensure our channels are always serving up a wide variety of the freshest programmes. Drama and reality series, as well as movies of high production value continues to be the key content that we look out for. We did not significantly cut back on our acquisition budget when the conditions of the economy were more challenging, but chose and spent very carefully to maximize value. We are still prudent but are defi nitely willing to invest when the right shows come along.” ———————————————————————————– Naresh Ramnath, Vice President, Acquisitions (Malay Channels), Astro “Our in-house productions have been the highlight of this year’s programming, especially our own signature properties such as Raja Lawak and Mari Menari. Amongst acquired formats both Mr & Mrs and Minute 2 Win It, which we localized into Serasi Bersama and Anda Ada 60 Saat, have been well received. We will most defi nitely be looking out for unique 360 degree entertainment formats that suit our cultural and channel brand requirements. Apart from this we will continue to identify and license relevant animation properties for kids, Hollywood features, and comedy shorts that form a key part of our overall programming plans. Driving viewer satisfaction and building customer confidence have always been the core fundamentals of our content strategy. This has in fact become more critical in the light of the recession; we have continued to invest in focused and relevant programming to generate high value for our viewers. In tough times, we make tough decisions. Our budgets have shrunk, leaving little room for experiments but we have tried our best to mitigate risks and drive higher returns on acquisition investments.” ———————————————————————————– Janice Cheng, Head of Content, LI TV Asia “Yes, I will be attending this year’s MIPTV with my colleague Syatirah Safran. I have to say that our home series has did pretty well for us last year. Many of the programmes we air are Asian exclusives, and our viewers have told us they really enjoy watching them. At MIP, the content on our shopping list remains the same as last year. We are looking for new and exciting content that covers food, home, wellness travel and style. Our content acquisition strategy remains unchanged as Li – which turns two in August, still needs to build its inventory. Original production has always been our priority. We are always on a lookout for partners to produce high quality and relevant shows with us.” ———————————————————————————– Layla Lewis, Associate Director, Programming, Acquisitions & Development, Turner Broadcasting System Asia-Pacific “We had a number of hits last year including Inazuma Eleven, an animated title about an aspiring youth football team, which was well received by kids all across Asia. Other titles such as Garfi eld, Super Hero Squad, League of Super Evil and Johnny Test were equally successful. Our key focus this year is comedy and adventure series that reflect Cartoon Network’s mission to animate kids’ lives. In Asia-Pacific, comedy that involves a lot of physical or visual humour and is light on dialogue, works well. We’re also interested in projects at an early stage of development, where we could come on board as a co-production or pre-buy partner. So please come to us with your ideas! Delivering quality content that kids love, continues to be Cartoon Network’s number one goal and over the past year we’ve identifi ed more comedy and adventure titles that appeal to our pan-regional audience. In doing so, we reach an economy of scale, making our budget stretch that little bit further.” ———————————————————————————– Michele Schofield, Vice President, Programming & Production, AETN All Asia Networks Pte Ltd. “The Trial of Saddam Hussein, Iran: The Hundred Year War, and Science and Islam were specials “The Trial of Saddam Hussein, Iran: The Hundred Year War, and Science and Islam were specials that rated well on History in Malaysia, our biggest market, last year. At MIPTV, we’d like to find series and specials for History. Military; topical, event-based history; tent-pole specials; science; and character-driven, living history would all be of interest. Our acquisition rates have remained relatively flat over the past couple of years but we are still committed to acquiring a similar quantity of hours. On Bio and CI, we’ve moved some funding from acquisitions to our priority of original productions in Asia.” ———————————————————————————– Joon Lee, Senior Vice President, Content and Communication, FOX International Channels “Multiple FOX International Channels (FIC) executives will be attending MIPTV. FIC continues to see strong performance from top existing shows and have also had great success with recently-acquired premium content. Our agreements with Shine International and FremantleMedia reached last year saw us acquire great brand shows, such as Master Chef and the #1 reality show in the US -American Idol- for exclusive fi rst-runs on STAR World across Asia. The extension of the FIC agreement with Disney last year ensures that we will continue to bring first-run exclusives of top-rated movies. FIC maintains an open-minded approach to our selection process for content. With a portfolio of 37 channels across 13 markets that reach 750 million households, we aim to keep a great relationship with our viewers with content to suit a variety of tastes and demographics. FIC’s priority these past two years has been to grow our acquisition portfolios as much as possible. We will continue in this vein throughout 2011.” ———————————————————————————– Joy Olby-Tan, Vice President, Network Acquisitions, Channel 5, MediaCorp “Acquired content which fared well for Channel 5 in 2010 include blockbuster movies and general variety series like Breaking The Magician’s Code and Ninja Warrior. Action-packed animation and fast paced wildlife or inspirational human interest documentaries fared well for okto. At MIPTV, Channel 5 is looking for mass appeal, prime time entertainment fare that is fresh and current. Okto is looking for content for preschool, info-ed, kids/family TV movies and youth dramas, plus arts related content like performances, ballets and arthouse films. Now, more players are competing for rights and viewership has also become increasingly fragmented. As such, Channel 5 will think twice before acquiring content with windows that are too far away from the date of original telecast. And while the channel still pays market value for primetime, non-primetime content has been reduced.” ———————————————————————————– Paul Robinson, CEO of KidsCo “Boo & Me, an original production which follows the adventures of an orangutan and KidsCo’s Idents has fared very well. Off the back of this success we have commissioned new content such as Bommi and Friends. We also acquired The Beach Crew, which has proved very popular with children across Asia. Our focus is to provide boys and girls, aged 6 to 10, with fantastic shows that are family appropriate and teach kids about cultural differences and global environmental issues. Our buying budget increased by more than 50 per cent last year and 2011 will see the budget increase again. The view is to expand our presence across territories we are already in, and launch into new key territories across Asia such as Malaysia and Japan.” ———————————————————————————– Kazumasa Iida, Head of International Program Development, NHK “NHK acquires around 150 documentary titles a year, mainly our for two documentary slots: World Documentary and Dramatic Planet. The former features mostly current affairs, modern history programmes related to present society and GasLand (USA), Ricejacking (France), and Last Train Home (China) rated well with our audience. For Dramatic Planet, we usually look for entertaining documentaries that are fit for family viewing. Some of the programmes that worked well for this slot in 2010 were Ancient Megastructures, Machu Pichu (UK/Canada), America before Colombus (Germany), and Hunting the Edge of Space (USA/UK). As for dramas, last year’s hit was the Korean drama Yi San by MBC. The drama recorded the highest rating in all of NHK’s satellite programmes. Primeval by ITV, UK was also successful in attracting the younger generation. In animation, The Clone Wars and The Penguins of Madagascar received positive responses from viewers, and seems likely we will continue with this series. In April, we are rebranding our channels and all our channels will go HD. In addition to science and current affairs we will also be looking for documentaries about art, music, theatre and films.”