FIC Revalues Its Tentpole Channels

“Just to get what you should be getting, you’ve got to give immense value,” says Zubin Gandevia, regional COO of Fox International Channels (FIC) in Asia. “There’s no easy buck to be made. I don’t think either advertisers or platforms mind paying more, but it’s a question of what they are getting in return.”

With both advertisers and affiliates re-evaluating the importance of international channels for their respective businesses, persuading them to pay more will be a tough call. This is the challenge facing Gandevia and other FIC executives in Asia, charged with raising the value of the company’s tentpole channels in key genres such as documentaries and movies.

FIC executives plan to extend the value factual offering National Geographic Channel has for operators by investing in documentaries geared towards the channel’s biggest local markets.

“You have to introduce new people to your fold,” Gandevia explains. “One way to do it effectively is dealing with subjects of very high relevance in that market. Hopefully those subjects will travel, but even if they don’t, we will still do it.”

Committed content investment
The strategy is something of a nod to rival factual channel Discovery, which managed to consolidate its early-mover advantage with committed content investment. Ramping up programming power for Nat Geo, a major engine of revenue for FIC worldwide, has become one of the company’s main priorities, as it strives to match Discovery’s global reach.

“No-one can defy gravity,” says FIC president, David Haslingden. “If you don’t spend the money, you’re not going to get great shows. The fact we are building our overall global business to the scale where we can match Discovery dollar-for-dollar on programming gives us a real benefit that, five years ago, we didn’t have.”

The increasing importance of localization for brands and platforms makes this a priority for Gandevia too, describing FIC’s current localization push as extremely aggressive. “I don’t necessarily see everybody else trying to do that,” he says. “People are talking about it, but we are actually doing it.”

Nat Geo Wild will soon be dubbed into Mandarin for viewers in Taiwan and Singapore for example, the channel’s first dubbed service since launch in 2006, when viewers in Hong Kong had the option of watching in Cantonese.

A different tack for Star Movies
Star Movies, Star’s most successful regional channel with localized feeds for India and Taiwan, launched its first bespoke feed in Southeast Asia earlier this year, in the Philippines.

With limited options for localization, Star Movies has to pursue a slightly different strategy than Nat Geo however. Taking a cue again from the genre leader, the aim is to emulate HBO’s successful multiplexing strategy by developing sub-brands for Star Movies.

The move is a risky one, as FIC must avoid jeopardizing the current success of the core Star Movies channel, while launching in a marketplace that is far more saturated than the one HBO was able to expand in.

“It’s not as easy to launch a new product as it was a few years ago, and it will only get tougher in some ways,” Gandevia concurs. “There’s always going to be this demand for bandwidth and Arpu versus supply.”

Gandevia declines to comment on a probable launch, which could happen later this year or sometime in 2011, describing the project as work in progress. Nevertheless he is confident that operators will find room for more Star Movies channels.

“International product, if localized well, is a great complement to local. Ultimately, it is the better product at the right value that will come onto the platform.”

This is an edited extract from a feature published in the Q1 2010 edition of The Asia Media Journal.