November 2014 - Digital TV Europe

November 2014

MIDDLE EAST

& AFRICA

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Middle East & Africa 2014 > Introduction

Digital TV Europe November 2014

Mixed picture

MIDDLE EAST

& AFRICA

It is difficult to make meaningful generalisations about the performance of the free-to-air and pay TV markets of the Middle East and Africa over the past year. In the Middle East, the free TV market – which still accounts for the overwhelming majority of household viewing – has suffered from the effects of the multiple crises and conflicts that have plagued the region. However, pan-Arab broadcasters, notably MBC, have been insulated, at least in part, from the worst. Pay TV, on the other hand, has continued to make strong progress from a modest base, with operators including OSN also tapping into the desire of the region’s youthful consumer base for new digital services. In sub-Saharan Africa, progress towards digital switchover has been difficult, thanks to a mix of bad planning, difficulties in communicating the transition to the public and the high cost of receivers. Pay TV on the other hand, once dominated by MultiChoice, operating primarily in the premium sector, has seen a multiplicity of new services launch. In Digital TV Europe’s Middle East & Africa 2014, we summarise the general trends and interview leading players across both regions. Stuart Thomson, Editor [email protected]

Contents

2014

Published By: Informa Telecoms & Media Mortimer House 37-41 Mortimer Street London W1T 3JH Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5000 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7017 4953 Website: www.digitaltveurope.net Editor Stuart Thomson Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5314 Email: [email protected] Deputy Editor Andy McDonald Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5293 Email: [email protected] Art Director Matthew Humberstone

The Middle East: the big picture; Mixed fortunes

2

Publisher Tim Banham

Interview: Sam Barnett, MBC

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Printing Wyndeham Grange, West Sussex

Interview: David Butorac, OSN

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Africa: the big picture; African exchange

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Interview: François Deplanck, A+

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© Informa UK Ltd 2014 All rights reserved Reproduction without permission is prohibited

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Lebanon

Syria


2,250,000 22,600

2,000,000 1,000,000

42,600 1,036,900 100 1,300 312,300 4,204

Middle East & Africa 2014 > The Middle East and its growth prospects

Iraq Jordan n

3,501,000 150,000 158,000 2,610,564 1,470,087

5,000 181,050 5,000 1,750 281,000 111,120

1,030,000 900 341,460

Kuwait

Middle East: the big picture

Saudi Arabia

Satellite continues to dominate TV reception in the Middle East, but IPTV and TV everywhere are growing as fixed and mobile broadband infrastructure develops. Visit us at www.digitaltveurope.net

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1,800,000* 120,000* 3,070,800 23,000 330,800 153,200 811,830

Iran

Afghanistan

69,700 97,000 208,830 62,400

Bahrain

115,000** 4,300



Qatar Q Qata ata

5,000 494,000 75,000 406,000 1,062,500 485,790

UAE * estimate ** 1Q 2014 estimate

274,700 75,000 173,192 73,635

1,620,000 179,000

Cable

Oman

Yemen

DTH DTT IPTV Broadband LTE For comparison purposes, all figures are for Q2 2014 unless otherwise stated. Informa Telecoms &Media's World Broadband Information Service (WBIS) & World Cellular Information Service (WCIS)

Visit us at www.digitaltveurope.net

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Mixed fortunes Free TV, the mainstay of Middle Eastern broadcasting, has been badly hit by the impact of the region’s conflicts over the past year. But pay TV services and pan-Arab free-to-air is still growing. Stuart Thomson reports.

Your Face Sounds Familiar : MBC is the region's leading broadcaster

Middle Easternern TV business has

The not been immune by any means from the conflicts that have plagued the region in recent years. But pay TV services have seen strong growth from a still relatively small base, while pan-Arab free-to-air broadcasters – notably MBC – appear better placed to weather the storm than other channel providers. TV distribution in the Middle East remains overwhelmingly dominated by satellite – as can be seen from our map on the previous pages – and principally by free-to-air satellite TV, although there are some significant regional variations. Pay TV is strong, for example, in the UAE, at least by comparison with other markets in the region, being the home to both OSN and Abu Dhabi Media as well as fixed-line operators Du and Etisalat. According to research group

Ovum (owned by Digital TV Europe’s publisher Informa), pay digital satellite accounted for 30% of homes at the end of 2012, compared with 24% who took free-to-air digital satellite and 29% who took IPTV. Over half of households in the UAE also take their TV from satellite, despite higher than average IPTV penetration for the region. According to Ovum, IPTV penetration is likely to increase over the next few years, but DTH will remain the leading distribution platform by a narrow margin. DTT is not expected to have a significant impact on the market, but OTT services are present, notably in the form of Dubai-based icflix, which launched in July last year. OSN also offers its Go by OSN as an OTT standalone offering across its footprint. Qatar, home of Al Jazeera and, like the UAE, a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council

(GCC), is also exceptional in having very high pay TV penetration, at over 75%, according to Ovum, which expects pay TV revenues in the country to rise to US$51 million (€40 million) by 2017. In addition to DTH, Ooredoo, formerly Qatar Telecom, offers the Mozaic TV+ IPTV platform, which had 88,390 customers at the end of September 2013, giving IPTV a strong lead over DTH. A satellite dish ban was imposed 22 years ago but has not been enforced. OSN’s service is available via Ooredoo as well as via satellite. Bahrain also has robust pay TV penetration of over 50% at the end of 2012, according to Ovum, with Al Jazeera Sports/beIN Sports and OSN the major players. DTH is the dominant distribution platform with penetration of over 90%. As in Qatar, a satellite dish ban exists but has never been enforced.


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Saudi Arabia, the largest GCC state, and the most culturally conservative, has lower pay TV penetration, with about a quarter of homes taking a pay TV service and about seven in 10 homes taking free-to-air DTH services. Saudi Telecom Company’s InVision IPTV service had about 160,000 subscribers by September 2013, according to Ovum, offering a range of packages over DSL and fibre networks via a hybrid IPTV/DTH platform to enable users to access free-to-air satellite channels. DTT is stronger in Saudi Arabia than elsewhere in the region, with the country rolling out a service as long ago as 2006. Saudi Arabia-based technology provider Selevision recently teamed up with satellite operator Arabsat to launch what the pair say will be the first HbbTV-based service in the Middle East and North Africa region. YouTube is extremely popular among the younger demographic in the country, helping to boost mobile OTT viewing in particular. Elsewhere in the region, free-to-air TV is overwhelmingly dominant. Even Oman, another GCC state, has pay TV penetration of only about 7%, with the overwhelming majority of people accessing free-to-air channels only. In the largest Arabic market, Egypt, according to Ovum, only about 6% paid for TV services at the end of 2012 – which nevertheless represented 1.1 million homes. The country had 21.2 million TV homes at the end of 2012, with about three in six using DTH as their primary means of receiving channels, with the remainder primarily analogue terrestrial services. The majority of services were free-to-air.

Major broadcasters include state provider ERTU, with both national and regional services, Nile Television Network, with a variety of thematic channels covering most genres Piracy remains a major problem in the region. Pressure put by rightsholders on satellite operator Nilesat has resulted in the removal of channels that carry pirated content – for example Panorama Comedy and Panorama Action in July 2013. Major broadcasters that have launched services in the region include MBC, which launched MBC MASR, its dedicated Egyptian channel, in 2012, while Saudi Arabia-based Rotana Group launched its own channel, the Masriya Channel, offering a mix of general entertainment targeted at an Egyptian audience, in 2011. News broadcasters have also entered the fray, with Al Arabiya launching a local channel, Al Hadath, in 2012. Al Jazeera’s service, Al Jazeera Mubasher, has run into problems in the country since the fall of former president Mohammed Morsi, with an administrative court ordering it to be taken off air in September, despite the fact that the channel is actually broadcast via Eutelsat and is therefore outside Egypt’s power to remove. OTT services remain in their infancy. OSN Play and icflix are both present in Egypt. Ovum predicted in its last Egypt update that there will be 2.2 million DTT homes in 2017, with analogue holding the major share as far as terrestrial reception is concerned. Elsewhere in the region, Jordan has low pay TV penetration, with Ovum expecting that pay

TV will reach only 6% of households by 2017. Free digital satellite accounted for over 80% of homes at the end of 2012. In war-torn Syria, meanwhile, pay TV is even more of a minority pursuit, with Ovum estimating that fewer than 1% of households took a pay TV service at the end of 2012. Freeto-air satellite accounts for 85% of household reception.

Advertising market The prevalence of conflict in key parts of the region over the last few years – first with the wave of revolutions of 2011 and latterly with post-revolutionary turmoil in Egypt, the Syrian civil war and continued and worsening conflict in Iraq, as well as strife in Gaza and Yemen – has had a disastrous impact on the free-to-air TV market. While pay TV businesses in markets far from conflict have in fact remained relatively robust, the advertising business has suffered multiple crises. According to Sami Raffoul, general manager of the Dubai office of the Pan-Arab Research Centre (PARC), the multiple crises suffered by the region over the last few years have not only adversely impacted the advertising business in the territories immediately subject to conflict but has had a knock-on effect across the entire region. The Syrian crisis – and its spillover into neighbouring countries, notably Iraq – in particular severely affected the advertising business. The burden of looking after refugees has

Middle East advertising: rating of markets, growth & media split Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Market Pan Arab Media United Arab Emirates Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Kuwait Egypt Qatar Lebanon Oman Jordan Bahrain Other Markets Total All Markets

Y2012 7,044 1,034 968 691 772 309 303 179 96 63 90 11,550

Y2013 8,390 1,071 964 702 532 422 335 246 92 62 82 12,899

Y2014 9,970 1,068 882 629 546 415 364 196 81 59 80 14,289

% Variation Y14/13 19 0 -9 -10 3 -2 9 -21 -12 -5 -3 11

Media Contribution (US$ million) Television Other Media 9,766 183 119 950 59 823 259 369 215 331 9 405 261 104 11 184 9 73 2 56 53 27 10,782 3,505 Source: Pan Arab Research Centre


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Middle East advertising: detailed media split by country 100%

80%

Cinema Outdoor

60% Radio 40%

Magazines Newspapers

20%

Television 0%

Total 14,289

Pan 9,970

UAE 1,068

KSA 982

impacted neighbouring countries such as Jordan and Lebanon, sucking resources out of the wider economy. In areas far from the war, workers of Syrian origin who previously spent money in the local economy have instead sent what cash they can home to help their families survive. Images of conflict on the TV news have also acted as a brake on advertisers who are reluctant to be seen as insensitive. According to Raffoul, pan-Arab media, meaning those TV channels that are broadcast across the Arab region to a wide audience, have continued to grow, but at a much lower rate than was previously the case. According to figures compiled by PARC, pan-Arab media turned in revenues of US$9.97 billion in 2014, up 19% year-on-year. However, it is not clear how much the advertising rate card of channels reflects the actual purchase price of advertising inventory, so figures have to be taken cautiously. This is particularly the case as panArab media includes a number of Egyptian channels that initially used pan-Arab distribution primarily as a way to target their own domestic audience, unhindered by domestic restrictions, but found a ready audience in other parts of the Arab world, including Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, where large numbers of Egyptian migrant workers are present. At a national level, only Egypt and Lebanon recorded growth overall, with Egypt growing 3% to US$1.068 billion and Lebanon posting growth of 9% to US$364 million. According to Raffoul, Egypt has performed well only relative to the prior year, characterised

KWT 629

EGY 546

QTR 415 $US(m)

LEB 364

OMN 196

by the political crises leading up to the fall of the Morsi government, with the market still short of the level of 2012, let alone the pre-revolutionary era. In the case of Lebanon, the real rate of growth is hard to estimate with accuracy, but Raffoul believes the level of advertising activity may have been boosted by the arrival of an effective independent audience measurement system provided by GfK. Other markets have suffered badly. PARC estimates that the Saudi market fell by 9% last year, while Oman fell by a staggering 21%. Dubai-based pan-Arabic broadcaster MBC (whose CEO Sam Barnett is interviewed on p.11) is, says Raffoul, “probably the only really robust player in the region”, thanks to its abilities to invest in quality programming that can be broadcast across the region while also investing in a local presence where it makes sense – notably with its MBC MASR channel for Egypt. Raffoul also praised MBC’s decision to invest in local sports by, for example, taking the rights to the Saudi football league. While other broadcasters have invested heavily in international sports rights, he says that often such rights have not been successfully exploited, failing to generate sufficient revenues to justify the investment. Raffoul says that digital media continues to grow across the region, appealing strongly to a more youthful demographic. He estimates from anecdotal sources that digital currently accounts for “five to seven per cent of ad budgets”. Digital includes the web, mobile and social media. Both international players includ-

JOR 81

BAH 59

Other 80

Source: Pan Arab Research Centre

ing Google and local news and other media are benefiting from increased web traffic. However, he points out, local and regional news content, though popular, does not necessarily lend itself to advertising, particularly as much of the news coming out of the region relates to conflict. YouTube is increasingly popular, with countries including Saudi Arabia leading the way, as noted above. One advantage of digital media is that usage can be measured highly accurately. For broadcast channels, audience measurement remains challenging. Egypt’s plans to develop a TV metering system were interrupted by the revolution. The UAE has implemented a system that has attracted both positive and negative coverage, with some broadcaster challenging its statistics. It has recently been audited, with the results of that audit still to be published. Saudi Arabia has, according to Raffoul, watched the UAE experiment closely and is now implementing its own audience metering system, supplied and managed by GfK. The first data is promised during the first half of next year.

Pay TV growth GfK has already implemented a metering system for Lebanon, with data available since the early part of this year, and Raffoul says that this in part explained how that country defied the overall trend across the region for advertising revenues to fall over 2014, despite its proximity


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to the Syrian conflict. Pay TV has made significant progress in recent years across the Middle East, with OSN (whose CEO David Butorac is interviewed on p.14) in particular growing its base significantly recently. The other major pay TV players are all Gulf-based, with Qatar’s Al Jazeera/beIN Sports and Saudi Arabia-based Al Majd providing competition. Another major player is UAEbased Abu Dhabi Media Group, which recently took the decision to supply its channels to OSN rather than continue to invest in its own proprietary platform to reach subscribers. According to Dennis Lehtinen, head of pay TV operations at Abu Dhabi Media, pay TV is mainly growing in the GCC countries, and the main drivers, as elsewhere in the world, are exclusive sports, including the main European football leagues, movies and TV series – both from western countries and from the Arabic world and Turkey. He says that free-to-air broadcasters have secured pay TV window rights and OTT rights to diversify their revenue streams, and suggests that the market could be opened out and pay TV penetration improved if low-cost operators such as My-HD, a Gulfbased operator that launched last year, are successful. At the other end of the spectrum, consolidation of pay TV groups ART, ADM and Filipino channel provider Pehla TV has enabled OSN to offer a unified platform with a range of content available via a single receiver. Lehtinen also points out that IPTV in the UAE, where dishes are banned in many areas, can also facilitate pay TV expansion. The development of fixed-line networks could also facilitate growth in a number of other Gulf markets. Adu Dhabi Media itself, says Lehtinen, will focus primarily on developing its sports channels, “both with international and local content, production of sport shows, developing studios around sports events and so on”. He points out that local football leagues could help drive pay TV take-up. “The encryption of the Arabian Gulf League has been a big success with a high subscriber growth in the UAE. The concept of encrypting local football leagues could be a future driver for pay TV in the region, similar to many developed pay TV markets,” he says. Lehtinen points out that while sports is a key driver for pay TV, the economics of delivering international league football are problematic. “Premium sport is the main driver for pay TV growth. However the cost for sports rights compared to their consumer affordability in the region, where only an estimated 10 million


households in MENA can actually afford premium pay TV, makes it hard to find a business model to make pay TV work commercially, at least for the short term,” he says. Lehtinent suggests that local football rights are an underused resource – something also recognised by OSN, which has commercialised rights to the popular Saudi league. He says that Abu Dhabi Media could look to invest further in this area. “Abu Dhabi Media’s long

egy is to work closely with governments to legally battle piracy. One challenge in many countries in the region is the low priority for IP protection due to other domestic challenges.” For Lehtinen, piracy is likely to remain a problem, and the best defence of pay TV operators will be to deliver a compelling user experience that pirate services can’t match. “In the short to medium term piracy will be the main challenge for the growth of pay TV in the

“The concept of encrypting local football leagues could be a future driver for pay TV in the region.” Dennis Lehtinen, Abu Dhabi Media

term strategy for sports rights is under development, and during the coming months it will be more clear what offering will be available on Abu Dhabi Sports channels,” he says. “As mentioned before, local football – except for the Saudi league – could be something ADM invests in based on the success of the Arabian Gulf League. However nothing is decided yet.” Lehtinen says Abu Dhabi Media is also planning to launch its own first-run drama channel, AD Drama+, in January, introducing a 6090 day window for pay TV before the content is shown on free-to-air.

Piracy threat Piracy has long been a major threat across the region, both to pay TV and free-to-air channels. While the former have been subject to control word sharing attacks and – increasingly – illegal streaming of content, free channels have also suffered from other broadcasters illegally picking up their content and rebroadcasting it. For Lehtinen, speaking about the pay TV market, piracy remains the key hurdle preventing growth. “Piracy is the main obstacle for pay TV and other IP owners in the region. The main threat is live streamed sport content and the download of premium general entertainment through the internet. As broadband penetration increases the piracy threat increases,” he says. “When it comes to live sport, encryption providers, such as Irdeto, continue work to discover and block URLs providing free access to premium services. However the main strat-

region and with this in mind the pay TV operators need to focus on the quality on the screen, developing customer experience such as multiscreen offerings, HD broadcasting and excellent customer service,” he says. For the free-to-air market, while illegal rebroadcasting remains a problem, PARC’s Raffoul suggests that the majority of TV players now understand that there are limits to what they can get away with. “Respect for rights has been heightened by a few cases against those who have infringed,” he says. However, it remains true that the more powerful broadcasters protect their own rights by taking action against infringers independently. Not every legitimate channel provider can afford to monitor what is being broadcast on so many channels across such a large region. The burden is ultimately on broadcasters to prove that their content is being redistributed illegally. Rightsholders are also challenged by out-ofregion broadcasters with legitimate rights in their domestic market targeting expatriates, for example in the Gulf, with content to which they don’t hold rights for in the region. In some respects, the prevalence of piracy is a testament to the robust demand for services that exists across the Middle East, despite the problems the region faces. While the advertising market faces challenges, this has yet to result is a wholesale cull of channels. Despite the problems associated with the region’s conflicts, pan-Arab TV – both free and pay TV – is still in growth, and the region’s main players are still looking for new projects and content to build their offerings. ●


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The Middle East & Africa are two of the hottest emerging markets for digital TV in the world The regions of Middle East and Africa hold considerable growth potential for local broadcasters and service providers, as well as for international companies and investors. Digital TV Europe regularly puts the spotlight on these exciting markets with a series of Digital TV Europe Middle East & Africa Updates. July 2014

Available exclusively online, the updates provide a digest of news, interviews, opinion and analysis about the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa direct to your inbox.

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Interview > Sam Barnett, MBC


Interview: Sam Barnett, MBC MBC is the leading broadcaster in the Middle East and has prospered despite the many challenges facing media players in the region. CEO Sam Barnett talks to Digital TV Europe’s Stuart Thomson about the challenges and opportunities ahead. has long been the lynchpin of pan-Arab broadcasting scene and while other Gulf-based broadcasters have made headway with a mix of pay and free-to-air services, MBC continues to lead the way amongst broadcasters appealing to a wide audience across multiple territories. That success has not come without problems. While the recent history of conflict in the region has had an adverse impact on the strength of the overall advertising market, the performance of MBC and ‘pan-Arab’ media organisations generally have actually remained robust, continuing to grow their businesses, albeit at a slower pace than previously. Among the longer-term challenges facing free-to-air – and pay TV – broadcasters in the Middle East, however, is piracy. For a primarily free-to-air player like MBC, the main threat to its revenue is the illicit retransmission of content by other satellite-distributed free-to-air channels. MBC and pay TV provider OSN have been monitoring for copyright infringing material and establishing a process for verification of content by the studios. The pair have recently strengthened their collaboration with other broadcasters, inviting Rotana and ART to join this exercise. According to Sam Barnett, MBC’s CEO, the fact that attempts to tackle piracy have come to the fore over recent months is a sign of the industry maturing, with rights to distribute content across the Middle East rising in value. “It is really a symbol of our success, of the quality of local production and the vibrancy of the market,” says Barnett. Piracy disrupts the market in rights, destroying the value of windows for which pay and free TV broadcasters have paid large sums. For free-to-air players, while there are many reasons behind the failure of advertising rates to rise significantly, piracy is clearly

MBC the

one of these. “What piracy does is tend to fragment the market more than would otherwise be the case,” he says, citing the example of movie channel MBC2, which slipped out of the rankings of the 20 most-watched channels in Egypt as a result of illegal retransmission of films. Barnett says that the recent closure of about 15 of the biggest copyrightinfringing channels in the country resulted in the MBC movie service bouncing back to number six in the rankings. Barnett says that education – of regulators, satellite companies and even blue-chip advertisers – is key to tackling the problem. “We have seen blue-chip advertisers put their ads onto channels run by organised criminal groups,” he says. Taking on piracy across 22 different countries with widely differing regulatory regimes is also challenging, he says. The Broadcast Satellite Anti-Piracy Coalition, launched a year ago, now has a wide support amongst the major players, counting not only MBC and OSN but a growing range of broadcast and business groups among its members and supporters. MBC and others attempt to get the legitimate players to share information, identify infringers, and persuade the satellite operators to take down their signals. “The satellite providers have done most of the work on this. They have said to infringers: ‘you are stealing content from MBC’. If those channels continue to steal content the satellite operators will find a way to end the contract,” says Barnett. The coalition members also take the initiative in asking blue-chip advertisers not to give business to pirate stations. The coalition has also secured the support of law enforcement officials, for example in Egypt, in closing down illicit channels. Barnett says getting the attention of Hollywood studios has been more challenging than securing action on homegrown Arabic content. He is hopeful

that broadcasters will be able to get the studios’ attention when deals come up for renewal. “I’m not prepared to pay for first-run rights when I’m not actually getting those,” he says.

Localisation Piracy has not, in any case, stopped MBC from building a vibrant and successful business in the Middle East. Barnett says that the broadcaster has an overall audience of around 120 million viewers and a share of 48%, for example, in the Saudi market, so channel fragmentation has not had a significant adverse impact. One key to the strength of MBC’s business has been to differentiate its offerings to meet the needs of specific markets –notably by launching a dedicated Egyptian channel, MBC MASR, two years ago. “Egypt was our first major local channel and it was launched at a difficult time. We stuck it through and we have seen good uptake and now have the number one chan-


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Interview > Sam Barnett, MBC

nel in the market,” says Barnett. MBC, he says, is now looking to take that model further by looking at opportunities in particular markets. “Having shown that it works, we will look at other markets. I see an opportunity in the future to split our feed or to launch local channels,” he says. Delivering a local channel with local content, if backed by accurate audience measurement data, can help deliver profitability. Barnett points to the example of Algeria, where MBC’s channels take a 24% share of the audience but where the company makes no money because the local ad business isn’t substantial. The launch of a localised service here – in a territory that has recently made moves to open up its broadcasting business to outside investors – could make sense. MBC already re-broadcasts its signal via spot-beams to specific markets as well as panregionally. When and where to split its panregional feed is a matter that MBC will look at carefully, says Barnett. “The challenge is knowing when to take our broadcast signal down from the widebeam. We need to take a judgment on when to do that,” he says. MBC has also developed new digital distribution channels – notably its on-demand service Shahid. Barnett says this has grown from strength to strength, particularly since a recent refresh of the service that has seen its audience rise to 12 million unique users and 110 million media views a month. “We’ve been pleased with Shahid. We’ve


Arabs got Talent: MBC has successfully adapted international formats.

revamped it and seen it come into its own,” he says. “As the technology develops it’s becoming more usable. A lot of the traffic comes in through smartphones and so we are making sure whatever app people have gets access to the content.” The basic Shahid service is free catch-up, but MBC plans to launch a premium offering “at some point”, says Barnett. The other major area of focus for the broadcaster, however, is sports. While rights to international and European national leagues have been tied up by Sovereign fundbacked broadcasters with deep pockets, MBC has seen an opportunity to build on the value

Saraya Abdeen: MBC has invested in drama.

of more affordable local rights. In August the broadcaster captured the broadcasting rights to the Saudi football league. “This is widely popular and widely followed. We have also the rights to more than half of the Egyptian league exclusively,” says Barnett. “I think we are at the beginning of all this. We are focusing on the Saudi and Egyptian leagues and there is a lot of work to do to improve the quality of broadcasting of those.” MBC’s investment in local sports rights is part and parcel of a wider emphasis on local content. While the broadcaster continues to air a mix of international and Arabic shows on its main channels, it has placed a much greater emphasis in recent years on sourcing local shows and local versions of international formats across a variety of genres. “I think the correct mix always changes, but one thing we have done over the past few years is to reduce the proportion of western content and bring in more local content, including drama comedy and telenovelas,” says Barnett. “This is, in part, a sign of the strength of the market in the Middle East and it is having an impact on our channels. If you look at MBC Action, in 2007 it was based on western series, but now it is all about local shows and mixed martial arts and so on, all based in the Middle East.” Challenges such as content piracy are symptoms of success rather than failure. With a continued focus on delivering content that is relevant to local audiences, combined with the strength of its pan-regional presence, it seems likely that MBC will continue to prosper. ●


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Interview > David Butorac, OSN


Interview: David Butorac, OSN Pay TV operator OSN has continued to see strong growth recently and is now looking to expand its offering further via digital distribution. CEO David Butorac talks to Digital TV Europe’s Stuart Thomson about the company’s plans. TV remains – relatively

If pay speaking – a minority interest in the Middle East, it has at least been relatively immune to the worst effects of conflict, which has seen advertising revenues drop significantly among commercial free-to-air channels, and not only close to the fighting. Pay TV operator OSN, for example, has continued to grow its base over the last couple of years. “The free-to-air and pay markets are different. They are driven by advertising and we are driven by subscriptions, and the region’s conflicts have not dented our sales growth in any way,” says OSN CEO David Butorac. The plethora of free-to-air channels available via satellite across a region that shares a common language does, on the other hand, continue to have an impact on the pay TV opportunity. When it comes to differentiating

its offering, OSN does not emphasise the number of channels as a key selling point, unlike western pay TV service providers. “We don’t sell on volume,” says Butorac. “We have 146 channels compared to the 600 on free-to-air. The key differentiator for us is quality content, with a premium window where you always see that content first on pay TV.” The availability of HD services has been a key part of this and all OSN’s premium entertainment channels are now in HD. The broadcaster has also sold on its superior user experience, with content available on multiple screens, with on-demand service OSN Play launching to OSN subscribers in 2012. More recently, OSN has innovated by launching a place-shifting service. This is available to its subscribers but also as a standalone service targeted at a younger demo-

graphic used to viewing content on mobile devices. Go by OSN is available for about US$10 (€8) per month to non-subscribers, and is primarily seen as a way to reduce churn among the existing user base. “We think digital services generally will target a younger demographic that doesn’t sit in front of the TV but can still have access to content,” says Butorac. He points to the high penetration of smartphones in the region as an indicator of the likely popularity of a Go by OSN-type of service, although he admits that available broadband speeds leave something to be desired. Nevertheless, he says, the technology platform, which permits progressive downloads to enable a smooth viewing experience, can deliver a compelling service. OSN is in fact now looking to broadband delivery of services as a key growth opportuni-


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Interview > David Butorac, OSN


OSN launched its OSN Play on-demand service to subscribers in 2012.

ty in its own right. Butorac points out that it is not necessarily very efficient to deliver content by satellite that is targeted to relatively small expatriate groups in the region, or to territories where the subscriber footprint is relatively small. OSN’s acquisition of Pehla TV’s suite of channels for the region has enabled it to capture the sizeable Filipino market with a satellite-delivered service, but he points to the presence in the region of other groups who might be more efficiently served with channels delivered over broadband. In addition to migrant workers in the Gulf, Butorac says OSN might also look to alternative means of delivery to provide a service specifically for North Africa. “We own rights for the entire MENA region, but if you look at North Africa, that is a market that, because of piracy and a different level of GDP per capita, is not efficient to reach by satellite,” he says. “We could launch a streaming service across North Africa that could be based on Go by OSN to aggregate subscription services.” Using IP distribution and adding French-language content for the local audience could give OSN a route into this potentially large market.

Single platform For the region’s core pay TV markets in the Gulf, satellite remains the most efficient way to reach subscribers. Consolidation of the pay TV offering, so that all the most popular content is available via a single device in the home, is seen as a key goal, but one that has in the past proved elusive. Yet OSN has made considerable progress, for example striking a deal with former platform rival ADD to add the ART channels exclusively to OSN’s platform. More recently, it has made more progress by signing a deal to redistribute Abu Dhabi Media’s channels on its platform. “Abu Dhabi Media decided its core focus was in the content business. We will remain competitive on content but in platforms they realised it is better to access everything via one box,” says Butorac. The deal provides a strong Arabic-language entertainment offering for OSN that reinforces its appeal to a wide audience. For Abu Dhabi Media, the deal provides access to OSN’s platform and sales and customer management services.

One of OSN’s other main competitors in the region is Al Jazeera, with the BeIN Sports offerings providing exclusive coverage of English Premier League football, among other things. Unlike Abu Dhabi Media, Al Jazeera has decided to build its own platform business, meaning that subscribers have to choose or take both services separately. Butorac is adamant that OSN will not compete for premium sports rights at uneconomic prices. “We do have significant sports content with golf, cricket, and rugby. But I’m not prepared to pay silly money for football,” he says. While all services are available via a single platform to customers of UAE fixed-line players Du and Etisalat, this remains not the case on satellite. However Butorac is hopeful that BeIN Sports will eventually see that it makes sense to distribute its channels more widely. In the meantime the broadcaster will focus on building its own entertainment offering and developing its Arabic-language services in particular. Key to this drive is the OSN Ya Hala channel, which achieved a strong following in Saudi Arabia and the UAE in particular. OSN has followed up with the launch of two further Arabic-language entertainment services. Butorac says 90% of new customers to the platform are Arabic-speaking. OSN has focused on acquiring local content rather than commissioning its own, but it has secured what Butorac describes as “early and exclusive windows” for popular series. It has been successful in acquiring rights to highly popular

Turkish drama series for OSN Ya Hala, such as Hareem al Sultan. It also supplements this with popular premium western shows such as those from HBO. Of course, those early and exclusive windows for premium content bring their own challenges – notably piracy. This is one of the problems that traditionally have held back pay TV penetration across the region. OSN famously invested in a complete set-top box swap-out to eradicate the problem and force people who had previously received its services for free either to pay or to lose the service. The investment appears to have paid off, with OSN recording strong year-on-year growth since that time. OSN has also joined MBC and others in moving against illegal distribution of content by free channels on satellite. For Butorac, one thorn in his side is that of South Asian platforms with legitimate rights in their own countries that illegally distribute their services on the grey market in the Gulf. He points to a “significant and well-orchestrated distribution” operation of at least one South Asian platform that breaches rights OSN has secured for the region. “That is something we are constantly fighting against,” he says. The pirating of content and illegal distribution of services is of course a sign that such services are in demand, and OSN is likely to continue to make progress by tapping into that desire for a wide range of high-quality content, delivered with a high-quality user experience. ●


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Middle East & Africa 2014 > Africa and its growth prospects


1,550 5,975,000

6,325 106,000 93,000*

Senegal

7,800 5,000

Mauritania

Morocco

75,500 112,300

923,000 47,200 6,018,080


16

Nigeria

1,190,000 2,200,000 1,005,000

Algeria

287,204 1,472,900

Sudan 111,000*

522,100 2,027,873

Ghana

Tunisia

185,000 3,000

67,000 4,000

Libya

2,831,574 37,350 12,770,000 39,000

Egypt

SYRIA

For comparison purposes, all figures are for Q2 2014. Source: Informa Telecoms and Media

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Mozambique

165,000

95,000

Cape Verde

LTE

Broadband

IPTV

Namibia

South Africa

1,294,623 1,419,300 5,423,000

* estimate

18,100 12,150

DTH

26,967* 39,000 10,000 79,000

Cable

198,408* 57,000 280,000 50,000

Angola

25,000 62,000

Botswana

31,806* 223,300 60,000

DTT

8,051 14,700 92,500

13,916

Zimbabwe

73,000

Malawi

Tanzania Tanzani

Kenya

3,420 0 0 88,000 140,000 0

26,000 54,000

Zambia

13,109 25,370 5,724

13,000* 35,000*

Rwanda

81,605 81 605 128,200 98,000

Ugandaa U

200,200 46,000 201,500 66,000

Mauritius

Seychelles


Africa: the big picture Mobile and fixed broadband penetration is growing across Africa, while governments are still addressing digital TV switchover.


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African exchange The African pay TV market is growing, but delays and disruptions continue to plague the analogue-to-digital switchover. Andy McDonald reports.

Zuku’s original musical drama, Groove Theory, is now in its second season.

TV market in Sub-

The pay Saharan Africa continues to grow, with new lower-priced entrants beginning to offer consumers different options from likes of MultiChoice – which has long been the leading force in pay TV on the continent. Azam Media, based out of Tanzania, has made strong progress in the past year, and has its sights set on expansion, while Wananchi Group, the pay TV and broadband operator

that owns the Zuku brand, recently raised US$130 million (€102 million) to help finance further growth in East and Southern Africa. Elsewhere, China-based StarTimes last year invested in South African pay TV operator TopTV, rebranding it StarSat with plans for DTH launches across the region in partnership with satellite operator SES. However, despite this progress, subSaharan Africa’s TV market still has a long way to go. By the end of 2013, there were 12.5

million pay TV subscribers across the subSaharan region out of a total 47.2 million TV households, according to Ovum statistics. While pay TV penetration has climbed from 8% of TV homes in 2005 to 27% in 2013, the overall proportion of homes with TVs was just 30% of sub-Saharan Africa’s total 155 million households – with this proportion tipped to only rise to 35% in 2019. Added to this, Ovum estimates that the “vast majority” of sub-Saharan countries will


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miss the June 2015 cut-off for analogue to digital switch-off, as mandated by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with many already seeking deadline extensions. A recent report by Digital TV Research instead said that “nearly every home will be converted by 2020.” Christoph Limmer, director of commercial development, broadcast and video at Eutelsat says that while it seems some countries will not be able to make their 2015 switchover deadline, DTT has still “created a momentum in the broadcast industry and is definitely accelerating the demand we see when it comes to DTH opportunities, projects and business models”. “We have been closely following the development of broadcasting in Africa over the past years but it’s over the last 12 months that we have seen the highest demand for satellite capacity. This is partly because of digital migration and partly because broadcasters want to be received in a broader footprint to expand their audience,” says Limmer. “The message we get from the broadcasters and regulators from different countries is that they understand that successful digital migration means combining DTH and DTT. Most countries understand that they will not be able to achieve 100% coverage – as we see already in Europe and North Africa – without a combination of infrastructures. Jean-Philippe Gillet, Intelsat’s vice president, Europe, Middle East and Africa sales, agrees that this combination of terrestrial and

sector and that is then deploying solutions that are helping the local government to speed up the transition to digital,” says Gillet. In April this year, MultiChoice signed a deal

pay TV. “The Azam model is very much at the entry level price,” he says, claiming that Azam is not luring viewers from Zuku or DStv, but adding net new customers. “We charge US$8

“We introduced a kids channel, Zuku Kids, last year, [in] around November. We also introduced a Swahili channel that is specific to Swahili movies that come from Tanzania.” Cathy Njari, Zuku

with Intelsat to expand its C-band capacity on Intelsat 904 at 60° East so it can distribute content to its terrestrial towers for DTT services. The deal will allow it to expand GOtv to target new countries, as well as grow its offering in countries where it is already present – including Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia, Namibia and Malawi.

The Azam example Two months later, MultiChoice also extended its DTH partnership with Intelsat, signing a new 15-year service agreement to deliver services to sub-Saharan Africa via the operator’s new Intelsat 36 satellite, which is expected to launch in late 2016. The satellite will be colocated with Intelsat 20 at 68.5° East, Intelsat’s main DTH spot for Africa. Also on the expansion path is Azam Media.

“In the past years I have never seen so much demand for free-to-air – there is a huge development taking place.” Christophe Limmer, Eutelsat

satellite infrastructure is the way forward – using MultiChoice, as a case in point. The firm, which operates the DStv platform, is the largest pan-regional pay TV service provider, with seven million DTH customers at the end of 2013. Yet at the same time, it has also launched and is now growing a DTT offering under the GOtv banner, which counted 680,000 subscribers at the end of last year. “For me, it’s a good example of someone in Africa who is already involved in the media


Launched in December last year, the firm is part of Bakhresa Group, a Tanazania-based conglomerate that provides products and services as diverse as ice cream, bottled water and plastic packaging. It also runs passenger ferry services and owns Azam Football Club, the reigning champions of Tanzania’s Vodacom Premier League. Azam Media CEO Rhys Torrington claims that Azam Media has sold 170,000 subscriptions to date, demonstrating the demand for

per month subscription, which sounds like peanuts in Europe. Of course, it’s still quite expensive here, but compared to some of the other prices, it actually is good value for money.” Azam media has recently expanded to Uganda, is set to open in Kenya and Zambia and has signed a distribution agreement for Sierra Leone – although plans there are temporarily on hold due to the recent Ebola outbreak. Rollouts are also expected in Rwanda, Burundi and Malawi before the end of the year, says Torrington. “By this time next year, I would, with the exception of South Africa, expect to have a presence in any English-speaking country in sub-Saharan Africa,” says Torrington. He says to do this, Azam will largely look to set up joint ventures – a move designed to keep set-up and infrastructure costs down and ease the licensing approval process. The growth of Azam Media is not without precedent. Indeed it is not even the first time Torrington has helped lead such efforts. From 2007 to 2009, Torrrington was chief operating officer and commercial director of Gateway Broadcast Services – the provider of GTV, a now defunct multi-channel DTH pay TV service that operated in English and French across sub-Saharan Africa. During its short life, GTV made major waves, winning the rights to broadcast English Premier League football, as well as backing several domestic leagues including those of Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda. Overall, the firm spent a total of US$200 million and created jobs and competition in 22 markets. “When we won the rights for the Premier League in Sub-Saharan Africa, we had caught DStv asleep at the wheel. It was the first time that the Premier League had split the rights out between South Africa, Nigeria and the rest


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Talkshow Boys Boys airs on MTG’s new free-to-air Tanzanian channel TV1.

Zuku fibre and DTH

[of the continent],” says Torrington. However, after this initial coup, the firm knew it would have to dig in deep in order to keep hold of these newly won rights. “At GTV, we were more than aware that we would have to bid significantly more three years after the first bid to secure it for the next round. For a small company, that was always going to be impossible, so the exit plan was always either to sell the business or to link up with somebody else who did have deep pockets,” explains Torrington. Opting for the former, in 2008 Gateway Broadcast Services reached a memorandum of understanding with Canal+. Clearly impressed with GTV’s progress and the

opportunities provided by the African market, Canal+ was preparing to buyout the business – before the recession hit. With the global economic environment taking a turn for the worse, a high stakes bet on an emerging market was clearly not to be. The proposed deal, which was never publicly reported, fell through, following which Gateway Broadcast Services went into liquidation in January 2009. “Increased instability in global markets interrupted our ability to secure funding on an acceptable timescale and have left us no choice but to cease operations,” said a company spokesman at the time, commenting on the company’s closure.

In October this year, Wananchi Group closed a US$130 million round of funding from existing shareholders, including major cable firms Liberty Global and Altice, African private equity firm Emerging Capital Partners, Mauritius-based ATMT and new African investor Helios Investment Partners. Announcing the cash injection, vice-chairman Richard Bell said the money would be used to consolidate the firm’s position in East Africa and to extend its services in the East and Southern parts of the continent – including continuing the deployment of fibre-to-thehome networks in more cities in East Africa. Zuku’s head of programming, Catherine Njari, says that Wananchi’s cable infrastructure will be rolling out to “several East African countries.” Currently, Zuku’s fibre offering is concentrated in the Kenyan cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, where Zuku provides broadband, pay TV and telephony services through a single cable into customers’ homes. Traditionally, cable TV and IPTV have only been taken up by a tiny proportion of people in sub-Saharan Africa. According to Ovum statistics, of all the homes in Sub-Saharan Africa, 69.6% have no TV, 21.2% are on analogue terrestrial, 6.6% have DTH and 2.2% are served by DTT. This leaves cable and IPTV with 0.4% and 0.1% respectively. As Eutelsat’s Limmer points out, there are infrastructure issues that arise from laying cable, that are avoided in DTH broadcasting. “What happens, not just with the cable for television, but also with fibre in Africa, [is] you install the cable and the next day someone digs it out again, they cut it, they sell it. In Nigeria for example, the government has now put soldiers on the ground to protect fibre.” Perhaps with this in mind, Wananchi is also looking to expand the firm’s DTH business in 2015, following launches this year in Malawi and Zambia. Zuku also already offers satellite TV in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania. With this platform growth comes an increase in content, with Zuku having already grown its own channel offering from a handful of Zuku-branded stations to more than 10 – including Zuku Entertainment, Zuku Sports, Zuku Life and a number of Zuku


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movie channels. “Where Africa is heading to cable, of course [cable] is important, but [the] main infrastructure is not an easy task. So yes, our content business more is in the DTH business and our content business remains critical, hence the reason DTH expansion is going to increase into 2015. This year we’ve done Malawi and Zambia, so in 2015 we will be going into more East African countries as regards to our DTH platform. We introduced a kids channel, Zuku Kids, last year, [in] around November. We also introduced a Swahili channel that is specific to Swahili movies that come from Tanzania,” says Njari, claiming that new channel launches are dictated by market needs and the territories that Zuku launches in. “We’re not only creating and managing branded channels. We also build our very own commissioned or local content, which means we’re engaging more and more [with] producers,” says Njari. She mentions successes like: political drama State House; musical drama show Groove Theory, which is now in its second season; and Krazy Kool Show, an original commission for the Zuku Kids channel.

Modern Times While homegrown African channels are rising in prominence, European broadcaster Modern Times Group (MTG) is also seizing the opportunities afforded by a growing pay TV market in sub-Saharan Africa. In October, the firm launched four factual entertainment channels for the first time in Malawi on the Zuku platform. Viasat Crime, Viasat Explore, Viasat History and Viasat Nature are already available in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda on a combination of Zuku’s and StarTimes’ pay platforms, as well as through some smaller operators. “We don’t really have a regional emphasis. We really would like to go pan-African,” says Joseph Hundah, executive vice-president of MTG’s African operations, pointing to South Africa as a particular area of interest. Aside from its own pay TV channels, MTG boosted its standing in Africa earlier this year when it completed its 75% buyout of youthorientated channel group Trace, which has a strong foothold on the continent. “The view really for us is that Afrcia has got a very high growth potential and we like Trace’s presence

in Africa, what they’re doing in Africa, and also the different innovative products that they want to launch in Africa. As an example, right now we’re launching a number of products on the mobile side, offering mobile products to Airtel, which is one of the major telcos in Africa,” says Hundah. On top of this, MTG this year launched a free-to-air general entertainment channel in


Another significant issue when it comes to digital migration, Hundah argues, is that there is not enough effort being put in to ensure that there are enough decoders and digital TVs in the market to handle the switchover. “The problem [is] that most consumers in Africa are too poor to buy the decoders – that’s the honest truth. Decoders are trading at anything between US$20 and US$100. That’s a lot of

“The problem [is] that most consumers in Africa are too poor to buy the decoders – that’s the honest truth. Decoders are trading at anything between US$20 and US$100.” Joseph Hundah, MTG

Tanzania called TV1. This is only MTG’s second African free-TV channel, following the launch of Viasat1 in Ghana in 2008. TV1 will show a mixture of locally produced news and entertainment content, such as talkshow Boys Boys, as well as international movies and series, but Hundah explains that MTG’s local content offering in Ghana is “significantly more advanced” with a combination of acquired as well as own-produced shows. While this free-to-air footprint promises to benefit MTG when digitisation takes place across sub-Saharan Africa, Hundah says that this will be a long-term outcome as “all Africa is lagging seriously behind in terms of implementation”. “So far it’s only Tanzania and Mauritius that have launched DTT and the deadline is June 2015, as you know. This for me is pretty scary,” says Hundah. Even in markets where digitsation has occurred, he argues that governments are making a “huge mistake” in not fully understanding the impact that digital migration will have on current free-to-air players. “What we saw in Tanzania, as an example, is that as soon as digital migration took place, immediately almost half the advertising market was wiped out. The main reason for this is, number one, the network hadn’t been fully implemented there across the country, and, number two, the government hadn’t really done, I would say, a solid job of educating the consumer about digital migration – what it means, what do they have to do to continue to enjoy watching free-to-air television and what the difference is in terms of quality, availability of channels etc.”

money for the average consumer. I don’t think enough has been done to try and subsidise the price of those boxes and to make sure that those boxes are affordable at a price that the consumer can afford,” he says. Azam Media’s Rhys Torrington agrees that “murky” deadlines for digital switchover make it harder to plan, especially when major players in the marketplace such as Uganda and Kenya appear to have seen their deadlines slip. “From a business point of view, it is incredibly difficult to plan the way we develop a service when there are still so many uncertainties around something that should have been certain, which is the switchover date,” says Torrington. Yet despite this, Eutelsat’s Limmer believes that momentum in the African free-to-air market has never been stronger. “In the past years I have never seen so much demand for free-to-air – there is a huge development taking place. Our 16° East position over francophone Africa is a good example. In the last two years we have built up a neighbourhood which now consists of more than 50 free-to-air channels which are public and private broadcasters from Francophone countries. Broadcasters are also getting more open to new business models, including basic encryption. So the whole digital migration has not just created a momentum for satellite, but has also created momentum for various business models across Africa.” With more growth expected to follow in the African pay TV market in years to come, pay TV’s final frontier may slowly but surely star to be coming of age. ●


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Interview > Francois Deplanck, A+


A+ for entertainment Ahead of the October launch of its new African channel, A+, Canal+ executive François Deplanck discusses the pay TV operator’s evolving strategy on the continent with Digital TV Europe’s Andy McDonald. Canal+ announced over the

When summer that it would launch a new, “100% African” channel, the move marked not only a desire by the pay TV operator to reflect the continent’s various identities, but a new approach to localised entertainment. With an ambition for A+ to become Frenchspeaking Africa’s “standard-setting channel”, Canal+ said the network will be made “by Africans, for Africans”, adding a new dimension to its own premium channel offering, which to date has focused on Hollywood

The channel will also be more widely accessible for viewers, he says. “It will be in a very low [cost] pay service, as opposed to the premium channels, the Canal+ channels, which are received by 50% of our overall subscribers,” explains Deplanck. While A+ will initially only be available on satellite via Canalsat, he says that in the coming years it will also hopefully be rolled out on DTT – giving viewers a cheaper introduction to the Canal+ offering, with its full line-up of premium channels still being available for a higher

“The idea for us, by launching A+, is to have the first African channel totally dedicated to African content.” François Deplanck, A+

movies, US or European series and sports. “The idea for us, by launching A+, is to have the first African channel totally dedicated to African content – both live action and movies, TV series and entertainment shows,” says François Deplanck, senior vice-president, channels and content, for Canal+ Overseas – the division of the company that includes satellite pay TV operator Canal+ Africa. With more than 1.1 million subscribers across French-speaking Africa, Canal+ Africa has been expanding its presence on the African continent for over 20 years and is in charge of releasing and marketing the ‘Les Chaînes Canal+’ offering, which comprises a string of premium channels – including Canal+, Canal+ Cinema, and Canal+ Sport. With A+, Deplanck says that the broadcaster “is aiming more to women”, with the rest of the Canal+ channels offering – in part because of its sports content – skewing towards men.

price via satellite. “The idea is to have a mirror of a modern and ambitious Africa. We will invest in a lot of content, both TV series and entertainment shows, to help enhance the production quality in French-speaking African countries,” says Deplanck. When Canal+ initially announced the launch of A+, it said roughly two-thirds of the programming would be dedicated to African or African-American series, films and TV movies, with the rest made up of broadcast special reports, reality shows and game shows. Discussing the station’s remit, Deplanck says that the programming will be approximately 90% produced in Africa, with the remaining 10% Afro-focused content originating from the US. The channel is also already tapping ambitious partnership opportunities to help fund the content. Music competition show, Island Africa Talent, for example, a flagship entertainment programme for A+, is

being made in partnership with 15 national channels from across the region. “It’s a pan-African show, the contestants come from 12 countries,” says Deplanck. “To be able to finance such an ambitious show, we couldn’t just rely on a new pay TV channel like A+. So we found big sponsors – Airtel, mainly, and Unilever – and established partnerships with some national channels in the main countries.” While A+ is to carry daily Island Africa Talent programmes, with around 20 minutes a day of exclusive content, it is sharing the main primetime shows and the casting shows with its national channel partners. A+’s launch is designed to help Canal+’s standing with African viewers, but Deplanck argues that it will also help the wider African production community – in particular Frenchspeaking countries where national channels “don’t have much money to spend apart from doing the newscasts.” “A producer in French-speaking Africa has to do everything – they are producing, directing, acting, writing, and they have to find the finance. Because they have to find the sponsors, they have sometimes to even pay the channels to have their programme aired,” says Deplanck. “We have a cost per-hour for our schedule, but if that’s not enough to finance a series then we can either bring in some money, with co-production rights or distribution rights, which we will recover or not. We have to start and help the producers.” This commitment to investment is what Canal+ hopes will differentiate A+. Though Canalsat has expanded its coverage and reach over Africa in recent years, adding African channels – both national and pan-African – to its offering, as well as airing a handful of African series on the Canal+ channel, Deplanck concedes Canal+ was buying, mostly from South Africa. “The idea here is to really start investing in content in the Frenchspeaking countries,” he says. A+ is due to launch on October 24. ●


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Product Definition & Strategy Director, Telefónica

CMFO, Member of the Board for Multimedia & Fixed Access Network Vipnet Croatia Mobiltel Bulgaria

Enabling the Widespread Adoption of 4K, UHD & Smart TVs Overcoming Production & Broadcast Challenges for UHD

Register Today: www.digitaltvsummit.com pOBC DTV Summit SepOct14.indd 1

27/08/2014 15:43

We Deliver the Best Experience in the Industry Intelsat connects your content to the largest number of viewers. Intelsat’s exclusive Video Neighborhoods place your content on the most in-demand satellites among top media and telecom providers. And, our next generation satellite platform will combine highthroughput spot beams for content regionalization and targeting, with our wide beam neighborhoods for mass audience coverage – that’s Intelsat EpicNG. Intelligent design developed specifically for your growth and your bottom line – you must agree, is an epic experience.

www.intelsat.com/media

Envision. Connect. Transform.

pIBC Intelsat SepOct14.indd 1

27/08/2014 17:24