ATF 2016: APAC content industry enters a new stage

Prensario interviewed at least 50 Asian buyers and noticed that most of them are looking for formats, especially entertainment, but also scripted. On the other hand, it was noticed that there is a growing appetite outside the region for Asian formats. A good recent example could be Turkey.

TRT, Turkish pubcaster acquired “What about my Family” (MBC, Korea), while prodco Medyapim picked up “Mother” (Nippon TV, Japan) and premiered with huge success on Star TV. On the other way, “Broken Pieces” (Endemol Shine Turkey and Global Agency) has been bought to be adapted in an Asian country.

This was one of the topics discussed at “The Charm Of Turkish Content”, the very first panel about Turkish TV organized by the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce that gathered producer Nilufer Kuyel, head of acquisitions and formats development, Endemol Shine Turkey, Ahmet Ziyalar, MD, ITV Inter Medya, and the screenwriters and producer Sema Ergenekon, and Eylem Canpolat. Turkish content expands geographically, but also diversifies offering entertainment formats apart from its hugely successful drama series. At the same time, there is openness in the domestic market for foreign scripted formats, too, as described above.

Content boundaries have been erased in this part of the world. Market to market, the Asian players are more integrated to the global industry, as buyers, co-producers, as well as very interesting partners for co-developments or co-financing. Chinese, Korean, Singaporean, Malaysian, Japanese and Indian companies announced a dozen of deals with other Asian or foreign companies. The global trend of joining forces is stronger than ever in the APAC region.

Keri Lewis Brown, managing director, K7 Media (UK) said there are three things happening in the formats market: fragmentation, consolidation and globalization. ‘Asian formats are in a perfect moment for the international expansion. The local companies are very aggressive on their business plans, and we are seeing that more Western countries are paying attention to Asian formats’.

While Korea is offering reality (“Where are we going Dad?”, MBC), talent (“Fantastic Duo”, SBS) and social experiment formats (“The Society Game”, CJ-Endemol Shine), Vietnam is betting on emotional titles (“The 7th Wish”, VTV3 and “Manbirth”, IFA Media/GroupM/Keshet), Japan repositioned its physical gameshows (“Hide and Seek with Drones”, TV Asahi) and China leads the way with singing talent shows (“Sing! China”, Star China).

Josh Black, CEO of GroupM APAC, explained that the company is working in two business models: the first one, with more than 10 years, is branded content; second, the acquisition of entertainment formats that are then commissioned to Asian broadcasters. It had a great experience with “Got Talent” in VTV3, Thailand.

Regarding the advertising market, he underlined: ‘Even TV is strong in the majority of the worldwide markets, in Asia online advertising is growing steadily. China is the biggest market and for every dollar invested, 0.50 cents go to online. Worldwide, for every single new dollar for ads, 0.77 cents go to digital’.

Superawesome (UK) disclosed a study that shows that TV is still a core part of the kid’s daily media activity: they spend an average of 2 hours and 30 minutes every day. Preference for TV grew 11%, passing from 66% in 2015 to 77% in 2016. But if they are forced to choose TV or Internet, they will incline for the latter with 98% in Thailand, 81% in The Philippines, 78% in Singapore and 73% in Indonesia.

Another interesting discovery is that short form content now rivals with long form in the battle for kid’s attention. While they choose long form programming watching TV and VOD, they prefer short contents watching Internet clips and short cartoons. ‘But digital and TV content feed off one another: the most popular digital content (from engaging characters to recognisable IPs) has its roots on TV’, it concluded.

What do the Asian buyers want? Syahrizan Mansor, Nick Asia: ‘Animations, both movies and series’. Estefania Arteaga, Viki: ‘Drama series from new origins, like Philippines’. Mariani Abdullah, DM Don Square (Brunei): ‘General entertainment programming, dramas and documentaries’. Eng Leanhong, Hang Meas HD TV (Cambodia): ‘Hit global formats to localise’. Hwang Jin Woo, CJ E&M (South Korea): ‘Non scripted formats’.

Fabricio Ferrara, from Singapore