Growing opportunities
TWO of the biggest personalities in Asian TV’s C-suite say they have stopped worrying and learned to love disruption.
“All the consolidation and transformation of 2018 will continue in 2019,” said Turner Asia Pacific vice president Ricky Ow at the ATF Leaders’ Conference in Singapore recently.
He tempered that with the idea of growing opportunities for Asian content. “Asian story-telling is growing and increasingly accepted worldwide,” he said.
Similarly, HBO Asia CEO Jonathan Spink said that the payTV industry, where HBO has been a leading name for more than two decades, is facing difficulties as a consequence of expanding viewer choice.
“Whether it is the number of devices, channels or the volume of content, we are involved in a battle for eyeballs,” he intoned.
But he too was quick to talk up the opportunities for Asian productions. “It is false to say this is new – Asia has always had a lot of content – but now it travels more easily.” Even with subtitles for English-speaking audiences.
“The response to (HBO Asia’s) originals has been magnificent. We will do a lot more,” said Spink.
Ow said that Asian content producers are making qualitative improvements. “The gap (between English-language and Asian original content) is narrowing. Chinese quality is increasing.”
Spink said that making original content in Asia involves risk and that there will be flops, but getting the balance right is key to pay-TV brands retaining loyalty, even as bundles get skinnier.
“We realised that we won’t please all of the people all of the time, but you can be pleasantly surprised when you do,” he said.
He cited success with the Taiwanese series Teenage Psychic.
Ow suggested that the biggest threat to incumbent brand name companies is not getting localisation right.
“You must understand that Asia is not one size fits all. And that localisation takes a lot of effort. You need to understand for instance that dubbing in China is different to dubbing in Taiwan,” Ow said. – Reuters