Vice-President (Creative Multimedia) at Malaysia's Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) Kamil Othman sees the government body's responsibility clearly and simply, to grow MSC (Multimedia Super Corridor) Malaysia companies' market share and profitability.

For the content industry, he says, they need to encourage local content to be exportable and marketable. Another target is to market MSC Malaysia status' companies' products and services abroad - and to make sure that MSC status companies can create content that can compete at an international level.

"Malaysia has so much to offer and to have a tiny piece of the global animation pie, which (we) believe will be worth US$650 billion in 2011, and this should be enough motivation for anyone and any country to take content creation seriously," says Othman.

Othman says the other part of MDec's remit is to build talent and infrastructure - with MSC Malaysia having already witnessed a significant rise from a mere 5,626 content industry jobs in 2007.

"Beside exporting content, we also want to position Malaysia as a country that can offer right skill sets and with world class facilities. To date, the total number of knowledge workers created by MSC Malaysia is 79,000 and this is expected to increase to 100,000 by 2010. Beside this, MSC Malaysia expects the inflow of foreign direct investment to increase more than 30 percent next year, looking at the rise in the number of local companies competing and winning deals overseas."

A study focusing entirely on the content industry is expected soon, but in the meantime MDec can share that the creative multimedia cluster is already the third biggest contributor to MSC Malaysia's revenue - accounting for 18.53 percent of total local revenue in 2007. Total local sales and export sales contributed 67 percent and 33 percent of total MSC Malaysia revenue of RM17.06 billion (US$4.7 billion) with RM11.49 billion (US$3 billion) and RM5.57 billion (US$1.5 billion) respectively. The Creative Multimedia cluster also contributed to the second highest number of Intellectual Property registered, with 243 IPs in 2007.

Figures for 2007 show that the total MSC Malaysia creative multimedia's export sales were RM140 million (US$37 million). Media's contribution to GDP as in creative industry is significantly higher in the services sector. In total MSC Malaysia Status Companies contributed a total of 1.7 percent to the country's GDP.

Asked about Malaysia's reputation abroad, Othman says the country is very much perceived as a reliable outsource party.

"We changed the perception by stating that (content) quality is not compromised. We position MSC Malaysia as a cost competitive investment market rather than low cost destination. We produce original content targeted for different markets. Saladin: The Animated Series is the first co-production project between MDeC and Al Jazeera Children's Channel. It is the first co-production with an international party and we hope to extend our capabilities in producing content of international nature."

"Other examples would be Codemasters International, Europe's largest independent developer of video games, which said Malaysia was chosen because of the conductive environment offered by the unique combination of the MSC, the experience and knowledge of Vision New Media, the availability of skilled animation talent and a financing mechanism from MDV which is well suited for game development. Los Angeles-based award winning visual effects studio, Rhythm and Hues Studio, will be setting up a high-tech studio on par with its LA studio in Malaysia as well."

Animation talent and content continues to be Malaysia's most successful asset in the creative multimedia industry." Currently, they have penetrated international markets and they are very successful in the Middle East and Australia." And for MIPTV, MDec's focus will be children's programming, especially that related to educational content.

Othman explains that as part of its commitment to ensure the success of MSC Malaysia Status companies, the Malaysian Government promises to fulfill the following Bill of Guarantees:

Under the Malaysian Government's Bill of Guarantees, any company granted the 'MSC-Status' enjoys several financial and non-financial incentives. The Government of Malaysia commits to: • Provide a world-class physical and information infrastructure. • Allow unrestricted employment of local and foreign knowledge workers. • Ensure freedom of ownership by exempting companies with MSC Status from local ownership requirements. • Give the freedom to source capital globally for MSC infrastructure, and the right to borrow funds globally.

• Provide competitive financial incentives, including no income tax for up to 10 years or an investment tax allowance, and no duties on import of multimedia equipment. • Become a regional leader in intellectual property protection and cyberlaws.

• Ensure no Internet censorship.

Provide globally competitive telecommunications tariffs.

• Tender key MSC infrastructure contracts to leading companies willing to use the MSC as their regional hub. • Provide an effective one-stop agency - MDeC.

As for what else is on MDec's agenda, Othamn says the body is looking into industry specifics to attract media companies to Malaysia. "One (such) is to strengthen our talent pool such as creating world class animators to service the industry. Next we would like to enter co-production deals and international treaties in order to produce content for the global market. MDeC would like to profile MSC Malaysia companies for global positioning. We will continue with partnerships - (which) we define as long term, to enable steady flow of content to be commissioned on a continuous basis. Other than all this, we plan to look into digital delivery and infrastructure such as digital TV. MDeC will be championing this drive to spread the usage of digital technology in the country." TVAplusSTAR's senior vice president for distribution and sales David Wisnia is charged with expanding the Asian-born network's reach across North American and European markets. He says that a number of important deals since the beginning of 2008, particularly in North America, have seen the footprint of STAR's Indian and Chinese channels increase dramatically.

"We launched three Mandarin language channels (Star Chinese Channel, Channel [V] Taiwan and Star Chinese Movies 2) for the first time in North America on IPTV platforms as well as on EchoStar. Additionally, on the South Asian content side, we've closed a number of cable deals with the likes of Comcast, RCN and Cox. From the DTH perspective, we also signed two DTH deals - renewing our contract with DirecTV as well as launching our Indian channels on EchoStar - making our South Asian general entertainment channels the only ones of their kind distributed on both DTH platforms."

Wisnia says STAR has a lot of traction in the UK, where STAR is

the most widely distributed South Asian Pay TV network via basic carriage on (NewsCorp sibling) Sky and distribution on Virgin.

"And in the US we are on more major platforms than ever before - including carriage on four of the top five MSO's in the country. Going forward, we'll be targeting Canada as well as continental Europe as key areas for expansion - especially in light of the strong demand that we've been receiving for our topflight Indian and Chinese content."

Wisnia says channels are carried a la carte and are often bundled with other Asian channels, targeting the Chinese and South

Asian Diaspora of all generations.

He continues, "STAR Plus continues to be the main driver

for us abroad, echoing its position

as the number one cable channel in India for over eight years running. However, we've been garnering a lot of positive feedback from viewers of STAR One, STAR Gold and (Tamil language) STAR Vijay. We're fortunate that our team in India

continues to develop great content which in turn makes us well positioned from the affiliate sales point of view to distribute our channels as widely as possible."

"On the Mandarin language side, STAR Chinese Channel and Channel [V] Taiwan has been received extremely positively - and we've seen subscriber numbers increase accordingly. STAR Chinese Movies 2 has been a success as well, bringing many of Hong Kong's greatest movies into the living rooms of our US viewers. That being said, going forward, we're looking to further strengthen this channel by revamping it with more themed based evenings to draw in additional viewers."

While not wishing to mess with proven formulas that have worked over time, Wisnia says there

has been some customization including time shifting the channels to better fit local time zones, and some local production in the UK; and now looking to do the same in the US starting in the coming months.

Wisnia says that in the US, STAR is in talks with all the major MSO's to increase distribution of channels - and to that end, some new deals will be announced in the coming months. "In Canada, we're looking to launch some of our linear channels as well - and hope to have something to announce soon. In Europe, we are in talks with several of the operators there and think we have a great opportunity to really grow our business and take it to the next level in the near future." TVAplus

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