Television is going from strength to strength in Asia and CASBAA’s CEO, Simon Twiston Davies says all the elements for growth across the region are now coming together, including regulatory policy changes aimed at opening the markets for Pay-TV operators. He says the economic outlook has been a key factor. “The economies have held up. Advertising spending has definitely recovered in the second half of 2010. Though there is still some hesitation with regards to forecasting how the second half of 2011 is going to look just in terms of regional economy,” Twiston Davies told TVA Plus. But the outlook is sound. “In terms of sheer numbers, growth continued across the region and this is within the CASBAA footprint, which runs from Japan all the way over to India and China, down to Australia. “We’re seeing a regional growth of still something around 8 per cent in the growth of subscriber numbers or connections to multi-channel television, as we know it,” he added. The strong growth in revenues was evident in India and China especially, with both markets accounting for an estimated 200 million subscribers to multichannel TV. In the development of programming the outlook was also positive. Malaysia’s production and television house, ASTRO, is a prime example of showing progress. “ASTRO at the moment is programming in itself 20 channels, and this is in order to compete not only with potential competition from Pay TV operators but very much to create some distance between themselves and the still strong terrestrial market,” Twiston Davies said. But evidence of programme development was “right across the region” amid on-going competition from terrestrial players. This was seen in content packaging or developing own programmes on a particular platform. India is a key example that is dominated as a multichannel market by Pay TV. “The reason why Pay TV is so strong in India is because it’s been an outstanding success in the development of content specifically the Indian market – both English language and increasingly in local languages,” he said. This has been evidenced by the success of the six direct to home players within the last two years. “(It) has been outstanding as they have developed programming strategies which actually target individual states and individual language groups,” Twiston Davies said. The potential in the Indian market is evidenced with local language content programming able to target markets of up to 100 million people. “It’s justified if you’ve got the right distribution development for a specific market.” Thailand has been another market with forecasts of growth. The recent Thailand in View conference, sponsored by CASBAA, provided an upbeat outlook for the market. Currently almost 10 million Thai households or around 50 per cent of all TV households have satellite dishes. Sinthu Peatrarut, managing director of Nielsen TV Audience Measurement (Thailand), said new regulations allowing Pay-TV to broadcast advertising up to a maximum of six minutes an hour, was a key step. Satellite dish prices have also been falling and local viewers are now able to purchase such Pay-TV startup packages for as low as 3,000 baht (US$100). “This industry will defi nitely continue to see rapid growth in the future like it has for the past 18 months,” Sinthu told local media. Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, in his address to the conference, said while the Thai cable and satellite TV market was “still at an initial stage, further rapid expansion can be expected”. “We need to put in place broadcasting laws that will ensure fairness and proper regulatory measures. Satellite television, in particular, is a case in point,” Abhisit said. Also optimistic is Niphon Naksompop, president of the Satellite Television Association of Thailand. Niphon forecast more than 95 per cent of local households would have satellite dishes within three years. He says this would translate into revenues of 20 billion baht (US$660 million) from advertising spending and product sales. Twiston Davies told TVAPlus news programming on Thailand’s cable and satellite TV had played a key role in programme development. “A lot of (the growth) is driven by news in creating an environment which favours of multichannel TV. A free ranging and competitive terrestrial TV market in Indonesia has made it a challenge for Pay-TV to make major inroads in the subscriber market. “We’re quite early in the cycle, although there have been a couple of periods when multi-channel TV looked as if was going to take off,” he said. But as competition rises pricing in terms of cost of a subscription to multi-channel TV is falling, he added. “As it’s getting cheaper we’re finding the penetration is beginning to rise. (But) we’re still at a very early stage in terms of penetration within Indonesia for legitimate operators in there.” Twiston Davies estimates as many as 200 operators will emerge within the next 12 to 18 months, which will drive penetration as new licences are granted in Indonesia. But he says growth has also been apparent in syndication of programmes made in Asia and destined for global markets, especially to Europe, with leaders led by VTV in India and Korea’s KBS. “We have numerous distribution channels overseas into the West for content such as that from Taiwan where content is being repackaged for very specific platforms and channels within Australia, the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom,” he said. Over recent years this has led to “astronomical growth” in high value packages that have been developed for those markets. “It is beginning to make sense to develop your own content for an overseas market,” he said. This is expected to be a key selling point at this month’s MIPTV in Cannes. “There is increasing numbers of content owners from Asia selling and succeeding in selling syndicated content to European markets and into the U.S. “So it’s a good story. Asia still can afford to spend more on content. Of course there are challenges, no doubt about that; and it’s never ever going to be easy, but in fact it’s becoming more attractive for broadcasters to develop content. But across all markets illegal operators were still sapping revenues by as much as US$2 billion annually from the multichannel TV business. Add to the mix the prevalence of on-line and hi-speed distribution to people in markets and this increases the problems of piracy for content providers. “It’s a big, big problem and it isn’t going to go away.” “We are encouraged though. There is a greater awareness by regulations by governments, by the media, even that of signal theft. Outright stealing of content via DVD’s or online distribution is a challenge, not only for the international broadcasters but is also a definable problem for content owners who are developing content for domestic markets,” he said.