Christopher Slaughter, CEO, CASBAA
Since taking over from CEO Simon Twiston Davies, Slaughter has been making his rounds to visit broadcasters and industry partners across the region.
“Myanmar is one of the countries of great interest so we’re going to be watching developments there very closely. We’re still very interested in watching developments in Vietnam and South Korea, as always. We have Upfronts in Manila and Indonesia as well. All of our markets are important to us but I think if we were to single out two or three of them that will be of key interest going forward, certainly that’s the short list.
In the short term, my biggest task is to reach out to the members and to have on-going engagement. In the first quarter (of 2013) we have a range of activities that are already in motion. So there’s lots of stuff coming up that as an organisation CASBAA will be doing.”
Deepak Mathur, Senior Vice President, Commercial, Asia Pacific and the Middle East, SES
Mathur is based in the new Singapore office which has expanded its floorspace and staff strength to better serve the needs of the region.
“The satellite industry continues to be very robust – young demographic population, high definition content, strong GDP growth are all long term trends. For us, the biggest excitement is that we’re going to launch SES-8 and that brings much needed boost for some of our key customers in the region. SES- 8 will be co-located with NSS-6 so it’ll create some redundancy and backup capacity at that slot.
I think collaboration among satellite operators and playout services will happen to a greater degree in Asia than anywhere else because Asia has the largest number of satellite operators than any region in the world, there being a lot of national satellite programmes. One of the consequences of that is there are frequency rights that are located in a single orbital slot that may belong to different parties (governments) and now we’re realising that it is better and more optimal to cooperate on the development of the satellite spectrum at some of the orbital slots. Watch this space and I think there is a very interesting development here.”
Hendrik McDermott, Managing Director, KidsCo TV
A year into this position, McDermott is ready to revamp KidsCo with a new on-air look and a commitment to localisation that promises to reach out to children in a bigger way.
“[Corus Entertainment] has a brand new state-ofthe- art technical facility in Toronto and we’re in the midst of moving technical capabilities there. On the technical side, it will allow us to introduce new dynamic graphics. So we’ve invested in a new onair look for the channel which we’re going to deploy in early 2013.
The focus for next year is an investment in dubbing. We look at Asia as being a growth market. We like to have our channels localised; children like to watch TV in their local language. So we’re renewing our commitment to dubbing, particularly in Asian languages. The commitment you’ll see from early 2013 is a brand new channel with new content.”
Deepakjit Singh, Managing Director, Asia, Encompass Digital Media
Under Singh’s leadership, Encompass recently crossed the 100th channel mark, which makes it arguably the largest independent playout and Teleport facility in Asia.
“We are already into what we call ad inserts or mini playout. This means we take content or a broadcast channel that is coming in a pan-Asian feed or a pan-global feed, and then convert it into a localised feed. You’re not really doing all that asset management but you’re really localising a certain portion of it. That’s a big trend that is coming, and that has to be very cost-effective because the revenue being earned from a localised market is also much less. No longer can you afford big setups for localisation. That’s the next trend which we are working towards. We are at a point where we can actually offer it to the customers.
As consumers, when we start to create enough momentum towards an experience that we want, technology will be merely an instrument. We are definitely looking into those areas and how technically that can be merged so that when the consumer wants it, we should be able to give it to them.”
Alexandre Muller, Managing Director, TV5MONDE Asia
Muller is not just the man leading TV5MONDE Asia, he has also recently been inducted into the Board of Directors at CASBAA.
“I do believe there is a big room for a channel on French luxury and entertainment. This is actually my next target, to be able to launch something like a channel dedicated to it in the next 12 to 18 months. Thematic lifestyle channels; you’ll have design, fashion, gastronomy, culinary and gardening.
TV5 is launching a new website. It will be in four languages so the interface is available in French, English, Japanese and Korean. We have social network integrated, we will have VOD and catch-up TV integrated, we’ll have four languages of subtitles. The first thematic channels will actually be available through the player. So it’s a value added service to operators like StarHub and for no additional cost they can actually give a value added service to the TV5Monde subscribers.”
Ashley Jordan, CEO, Fashion One Televison
With new carriage deals on the horizon (including Latin America) and an ability to exploit all intellectual property which the company fully owns, Jordan is taking the fashion channel to new heights.
“We’re trying to show people a different fashion channel. What they perceive to be a fashion channel, there’s so much more that can be brought to the table, a lot of original programming and fashion in all aspects of life. A lot of the times I get, ‘how are you going to do 24/7 fashion? It’s very niche.’ I don’t think it’s actually niche; I think its women’s programming. More and more you’re going to see a lot of shows that are coming out from us that is similar to something like Project Runway or Next Top Model but turned on its head.
We’ll be focusing on getting distribution in the last couple territories in Asia where we still need it, like Australia; and more penetration into China. We pretty much have distribution now in every country.”
