Quality now comes first in payTV market

January 13, 2015 | 12:48

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PayTV firms hope to make a fresh start in 2015 by focusing on improved content, rather than trying to attract customers through low fee packages.

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Jacques Aymar de Roquefeuil, deputy general director of K+, a joint venture between Vietnam Television (VTV) and Canal+ International Development (a subsidiary of the France-based Canal+ Group), said that providing customers with better quality services and exclusive entertainment programmes of high quality will be its top focus in the year ahead.

Meanwhile, in a recent annual meeting with business partners, Tran Binh Minh, VTV’s general director, asserted the national broadcaster’s commitment to holding the top spot in the traditional television market by continually improving content quality.

“Content is always the number-one issue. I have often asked for programmes to be removed from the schedule if their quality was deemed average. Meanwhile, we’ll continue to introduce ever-stringent quality standards for TV programmes,” Minh said.

In fact, VTV has reportedly pumped money into opening diverse film studious and major production centres as well as scaling up efforts to establish joint ventures on film and TV programme production for content diversification.

Last year, the Vietnamese market saw a price race among payTV firms including An Vien, K+, SCTV, and VTVcab. This tactic to lure customers through low fee packages led to a spike in subscriber numbers, but as a consequence Vietnam recorded the lowest average revenue per unit (ARPU) rate in ASEAN block.

Sophia Le, CEO of Thao Le Entertainment, one of leading television content providers in Vietnam, said Vietnamese payTV firms were acting contrary to market rules by racing to woo customers through low fees instead of improving quality.

With the hope of preventing another price war, Vietnam Television Corporation (VTC) and software and media firm VASC (the operator of MyTV) have proposed that the Ministry of Information and Communications pen a service management plan that imposes a floor-price to ensure healthy competition in the market.

The commitment of TV market leaders to create better quality instead of lowering fees is expected to raise the standard throughout the entire payTV market this year.