SUMMIT

Moving beyond the domesc market parcularly Asia, what we are looking at is a Pan
–Asian English content market. Currently over 80 % of the finished TV product market is in
English. This is in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. We are looking for like-minded broadcasters
in terms of creang a sort of affiliaon or alliance in Asia for a very praccal thing
that we could do together in terms of buying such English programmes. I think with the rise
of India, China and the Gulf economies what’s going to happen is that there will be more
demand for English content in Asia. So, the first thing that we could do is bulk buying. I
recently visited Dubai, parcularly NBC that launched the NBC acon channel and they are
very successful. They signed up with Hollywood studios in order to guarantee that they get
the American shows into the Pan-Arab region.
Similarly in the Pan-Asian region, that could be something we can start off with and form
affiliaons in term of geng beer rates in buying some of these English programmes. And
of course, once we go beyond buying we could do things like regional co-producons. In
Singapore we have a very limited talent pool. We are definitely interested in working with
other countries in the region to widen talent access but also lower producon cost. Our
cost of producon is higher and we feel that by sharing the cost, like if we co-developed an
English show that is shown on mulple plaorms, the cost will be lower.
The last thing is really internaonal co-producon, specifically working with the American
studios. I think what you’re seeing is the globalisaon of TV. American TV shows like Heroes
and Lost are like movies now. They go for world tours and they feature Asian and Middle
Eastern actors and actresses in them as well. They are defining TV market as a whole world
market. We are definitely in talks with some of these American movie studios to
co-produce internaonal shows but perhaps with some Asian elements like marshal arts or
with CGI that are done cheaply in Asia. That’s definitely something that we’re interested to
explore.
Ku Kay Mok, Business Development Director, MediaCorp TV Pte Ltd, Singapore
20