Tell us about your exclusive channel for Asia.

We are now available in Indonesia, and within the next 90 days, we’ll be launching in other territories around the region. Rialto Channel, a premium pay-TV channel in New Zealand has been in operation for 17 years on the Sky platform. The other genre including British films, foreign films, documentaries and more. As our factual genre has been very popular, we realise there is a niche for this content in Asia. That’s how Pulse Television was launched as a joint-venture between Rialto and Lightning International.

We will soon be available in 11 countries including Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka with an estimated potential reach of 186 million households. The travel series Across the World with Te Radar, for example, will now be available to millions of people tuning into Pulse Television. This is the first time Kiwi content will land in Asian markets so this is a great opportunity for our industry. We want to address the need for educational programmes such as traditional documentaries which are not covered as well as they should by any big players.

Viewers are willing to pay for anything if it’s packaged right so we have to be flexible with the business model. We’re going to look at each individual market and see how each platform work best for us. Each territory has a different need; some yearn for a higher-end product while some seek for a more educational type of content.