By Sophie Taylor
© Reuters Limited
BesTV, a Web TV joint service between China’s largest fixed-line company China Telecom Corp. and Shanghai Media Group, is talking to potential foreign media partners as it eyes a three-fold rise in viewers by year-end.
BesTV, which in September launched an Internet Protocol Television service — TV sent over telecoms networks using Internet protocol — now has over 100,000 subscribers in Shanghai and sees that rising to 400,000 households by the end of 2007, BesTV Marketing Director Rocky Li told Reuters on Tuesday.
“We are talking to companies from many different countries, not just the United States but also South Korea and other countries,” Li said in a telephone interview, but declined to give details.
Media industry sources close to SMG told Reuters on Tuesday that BesTV is in talks with a number of Hollywood movie distributors, in an effort to broadcast films on IPTV in the same time as they are shown at local cinemas.
SMG is the first company in China to receive a licence from Beijing to run IPTV.
Content was key in winning over residents in Shanghai, China’s financial hub — which number some 14 million — and consumers were particularly fond of Korean soap operas, Li said.
“We are looking at all kinds of content — movies, TV soaps, dramas, sports,” he added.
BesTV had around 60,000 household viewers at the end of last year, local media have reported, well short of the company’s earlier target of 80,000 to 100,000 households.
“We think we can do even better this year … our target for Shanghai right now is to get around 400,000 users this year,” Li said.
Research firm Media Partners Asia estimates pay-TV subscriptions, as opposed free-to-air nominal cable fees, in China will be worth $1.25 billion by 2015, compared with $48 million last year. MPA forecasts almost 2 million IPTV subscribers by 2010.
The Chinese government, fearful of social unrest, regularly censors the country’s media for politically sensitive content and has been a thorn in the side of foreign and domestic firms alike.
Foreign players such as News Corp. see China’s foray into Web TV as a chance for to grab a slice of the market. But although News Corp., Time Warner Inc. and Viacom Inc. all have TV channels in China launched over the last few years, each has been limited to mass broadcasting rights in southern Guangdong province bordering Hong Kong.
The Walt Disney Co. applied for its own limited broadcasting rights about four years ago, but has yet to receive permission for a Chinese version of the Disney channel.
Still, News Corp.’s Star TV channel, National Geographic and China Entertainment Television — part of tycoon Li Ka-shing’s flagship Tom Group — are jostling to work with BesTV, sources have told Reuters.
China-focused broadcaster Phoenix TV, part-owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., is also said to have agreed in principle to cooperate with BesTV after years of trying unsuccessfully to break into Shanghai, China’s richest city.
Faced with slowing growth in China’s telecoms market — the world’s biggest — with China Telecom and China Netcom are also eager to develop non-voice services to diversify their profit streams.