Temporary bump in acquisitions & local reruns

With Covid-19 containment measures in full swing across Asia, acquisition executives have activated interim plans that include short-term increases in finished tape licensing and dusting off in-house library titles, all with a close eye on shrinking budgets and expectations of a recession.

Buyers in Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore said lockdowns and captive audiences were not necessarily driving significant changes in the type of programming they are looking for.

“We have always been open to extending our sources of content; relevance is key,” says Agnes Rozario, the director of content for Malaysian platform Astro. 

Where they are buying more, acquisition bosses view the increases as short term and in direct response to production pauses rather than as a long-term trend.

“As we largely create content in-house for some parts of our business the restriction movement order has impacted our ability to do that. Hence we now have to fall back on licensing in the short term,” Rozario says. 

Singapore’s national broadcaster, Mediacorp, has also increased its canned acquisitions temporarily as a result of local production delays. 

Joy Olby-Tan, Mediacorp TV’s acquisitions lead, says she’s adding “marginally more canned product because slots have opened up due to the slowdown in original content. But this is a short-term solution because in the long run, original content is still what resonates with our viewers and what differentiates us,” she says.

Thailand’s PPTV is using more of its own local content as it monitors the Covid-19 situation, says Krissada Trishnananda, Bangkok Media and Broadcasting’s content acquisition director. 

Local content is also a priority in the Philippines. 

Vitto Lazatin, Cignal TV’s vice president, content acquisition, management and strategy, says the platform is now buying less but relying more on local (finished) acquisitions than on foreign titles. 

Media Prima, Malaysia’s biggest terrestrial broadcaster, is also buying less in the wake of the pandemic. 

Sherina Nordin, Media Prima’s director, brand and content group, says content budgets are being carefully managed.

Where there is higher demand, distributors are stocking up.

In Brunei Mariani Abdullah, DM Don Square Entertainment’s managing director and head of acquisitions, says she is buying more, and has added Thai drama to her list of potential acquisitions.  

Opinion is evenly split on use of the slew of new online screening options that have emerged in response to travel restrictions. 

Half of the people we spoke to said they were using online screening rooms to replace delayed/cancelled on-ground markets and events. 

The other half were not.

There is also no evidence yet that buyers in Asia are flocking to e-commerce sites to acquire rights any faster than they did before. 

More buyers said they weren’t using online trading platforms at the moment than those who said they were, with some still  undecided about online trading. 

“These challenging times made us realise the importance of attending film markets for updates,” DM Don Square Entertainment’s Abdullah says. 

Movies, kids and news content is driving higher consumption across the board. The biggest dip, predicably, is in sports content because of cancelled events.

Looking ahead, buyers expect acquisitions to shrink as an economic downturn takes hold. 

Asked what they think is most likely to happen to content in their markets in the next few months, there is universal agreement that the current production disruption followed by the global slowdown of new programme delivery will run alongside an economic downturn that will impact acquisition budgets. 

Astro’s Rozario also forecasts more co-productions as companies pool resources as well as a continuation of elevated levels of in-home consumption.

“Consumers will take a while to go back to their previous lives of being out and in close proximity with others,” she says. 

Bangkok Media and Broadcasting’s Trishnananda forecasts increased effort to utilise local content and to activate production alternatives. 

Brunei’s Abdullah forecasts a higher-than-usual percentage of acquisitions from other Asian markets. 

In addition to more Asian acquisitions, Mediacorp’s Olby-Tan predicts increased levels of international acquisitions as well as an increase in online content discovery in the coming months.

Published in ContentAsia's eNewsletter, 6 April 2019