Sponsored Links
TVA Editor Magz Osborne shares opinions and observations prompted by the ongoing evolution of television and its related industries in the Asia Pacific region.
Monday, May 17, 2010
In conversation at MIPTV 2010 in Cannes, Heroes creator Tim Kring discussed the show’s social and multi-media success.
“We were under no pressure to monetize the experience,” said Kring, “NBC.com gave us the sandbox to play in.”
Another upside of Heroes becoming a ‘trans-media’ experience, Kring said, was that gone were the days of having to waiting two months for Nielsen ratings. “Audience [...]
Related entries in:
Content |
Monday, April 05, 2010
With the merger of FOX International Channels with many of STAR’s channels in Asia, FOX executives now boast business cards covered in channel logos encompassing multiple genres across factual entertainment, GE, music, movies and news. Cross-promotion opportunities abound and Fox One Stop Media has been established to offer ad sales solutions at local, regional and global level.
Meanwhile Stat [...]
Related entries in:
Channels |
Friday, December 04, 2009
THE TV industry, as in every other recession, has been putting a brave face on things with the oft-spouted, “people stay in to save money and watch more TV in a downturn.”
Pay TV, similarly, loves to point out that having subscription revenues, instead of being solely reliant on advertising, makes those networks, if not recession-proof, then at least recession resistant.
So if viewers are wa [...]
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Amidst the air-kissing affectation of events along Cannes’ La Croisette, a couple of things stand out in my MIPCOM memories for 2009.
Attending AETN International’s party to celebrate its distribution, as well as international format and short form rights, of the film ‘The People Speak’, were co-directors Chris Moore and Dr Anthony Arnove.
Dr Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United [...]
Related entries in:
Event |
Thursday, October 01, 2009
A year on from the Lehman Brothers collapse that has been adopted by the media as the official start of the recession, everyone is looking for indicators that recovery is on its way.
But if sentiment about MIPCOM 2009 is anything to go by, the optimists’ bet on Q4 2009 as the turning point for the entertainment industry will hardly have the bookmakers quaking in their boots.
Content and form [...]
Friday, August 28, 2009
Interviewing FremantleMedia Asia’s CEO Patrick Schult recently, he mentioned a show called ‘Songs that Make you Cry’, best described as a “unique fusion of emotional storytelling and music.”
Licensed by FremantleMedia for all Asia from Japan’s Nippon TV (NTV), the show features a mixture of sad and uplifting stories retold, culminating in a song, significant to the story, being performed by a [...]
Related entries in:
Multimedia |
Monday, June 01, 2009
While the economic crisis has been widely reported across the spectrum, it has so far been reflected on our TV screens in the form of cheaper programming and far less on-air advertising.
Singapore’s MediaCorp cut the number of episodes in its English-language drama Red Thread (a blessing some might say), and STAR World is plugging its ad-gaps with ‘minisodes’ from Sony Pictures TV – including [...]
Friday, May 01, 2009
THE region has witnessed a few ups and downs in my twelve years here, including the Asian economic crisis in 1997 when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) coughed up US$40 billion to stabilize some of the region’s currencies; and the SARS outbreak of 2002, when the World Health Organization advised against travel to, or within, much of Asia.
In both cases these measures were taken to prevent [...]
Related entries in:
Economic |
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
TECHNICALLY a British film, Slumdog Millionaire’s recent sweeping success at all the major awards shows – the Academy Awards, Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes and BAFTA’s – as well as at the Box Office, will surely be touted as further proof of audiences’ appetite for Asian content.
(Frankly it’s a relief from the amount of times Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Kung Fu Panda are mentioned [...]
Sunday, March 01, 2009
12 February 2009 marked 200 years since the birth of Charles Robert Darwin, the British naturalist most famous for his book On the Origin of Species, which celebrates its 150th anniversary in March this year.
Denounced as tantamount to blasphemy upon publication, since the book’s theories of evolution and natural selection run in direct opposition to the Creationism, or Intelligent Design, esp [...]
Thursday, January 01, 2009
WITH some analysts predicting a meltdown akin to the end of life as we know it, trade show attendees in the latter part of 2008 were of mixed opinion as to how the crisis will manifest itself in the TV industry.
Comments ranged from the loaded question “It’s very quiet don’t you think?” at a MIPCOM that was officially two percent up on the previous year; to, “The show’s really buzzing, there se [...]
Monday, December 01, 2008
WHILE it’s widely agreed that one should avoid discussing politics or religion, the recent US presidential election is worthy of mention since Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy gave the race an almost surreal quality as the lines between fact and fiction increasingly blurred.
Actor Matt Damon apparently described Palin’s nomination as “like a really bad Disney movie”. Apologies to Disne [...]
Related entries in:
Politics |
Saturday, November 01, 2008
WHAT with global warming and the global financial meltdown, it seems hardly a day goes by without a heart-wrenching natural disaster, or greed-fuelled economic one, dominating the day’s headlines. Possibly even more worrying than the events themselves, is that anyone should be surprised at their occurrence. Seemingly the environmentalists and financial analysts are only to be believed once the eve [...]
Related entries in:
Economic |
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
ONE of the hottest topics on the agenda at the recent BCWW Conference 2008 in Seoul was that of format licensing. At first blush, it seemed a quite incongruous topic in a market that has neither imported nor exported formats of any kind, but that looks set to change with at least two Western formats set to hit South Korean screens.
Endemol’s senior licensing manager commercial & creative affair [...]
Friday, August 01, 2008
BY the time you read this, the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics will be over.
Michael Phelps will have secured his place in history having won eight gold medals in a single games and the closing ceremony will have seen David Beckham accept the Olympic torch on behalf of the 2012 host city, London.
For the first time ever, high definition signals were used for TV relays for all the events as the [...]
Related entries in:
Gaming |
Friday, May 30, 2008
Last year’s CASBAA Conference saw announcements heralding channel bouquets from Comcast International Media Group and NBC Universal – as well as new channels like AXN Beyond and Lotus Channel.
For those aiming to launch second quarter 2008, meeting that target looks increasingly unlikely, raising questions about the readiness of the channels. Or are greater, more worrying forces at play; are op [...]
Related entries in:
Content |
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Without wishing to sound like a scratched record (if anyone else remembers what one of those looks like), the TV industry is constantly evolving. Whether keeping pace with the technology, or consumer behaviour, or a combination of both, it would be naïve and short-sighted to ignore other, non-traditional, viewing platforms.
As ESPN STAR Sports’ MD Manu Sawhney puts it, “The lines between platf [...]
Monday, November 26, 2007
The realization that AXN is celebrating its 10th Anniversary came with it the dawning that I, too, will very soon be into my second decade in Asia.
And it’s interesting to chart how platforms have proliferated in just one TV home - mine.
Upon my arrival in Singapore, I had but a handful of free-to-air channels, a TV set and a VCR.
Today, via StarHub Cablevision and SingTel mioTV, I have [...]
Related entries in:
Cable | Gaming |
Monday, October 01, 2007
What would you consider a universal language?
In Asia, and indeed much of the world, the sharing of food is seen as an act of friendship. Some might say music, some say numbers, others say football is a language universally understood the world over.
And without this turning into some sort of manifesto for the United Nations, it certainly seems that people around the world have far more thi [...]
Add this blog to your RSS reader!
Permalink
Email This
Comments (0)