WARC, 5 March 2014
DUBAI: Broadcasters in the Gulf region can capitalise on the
shift of viewing habits towards high definition television as current broadband
speeds cannot handle that volume of data, according to a leading industry
figure.
Cliff Nelson, CEO of My-HD, a low-cost direct-to-home
platform, told Gulf News that TV and
satellite broadcasters had an advantage over streamed content. "HD
transmission requires 6-12 Megabits a second per channel which is a lot of
bandwidth, and most countries in this region don't offer that kind of
consistent bandwidth via IP," he said.
Nelson acknowledged that consumers could find cheap or free
content on the web and said that in future premium priced content providers
would "inevitably" suffer more, in both audience terms and in the
advertising rates they could charge.
But for now, "satellite is definitely more affordable
and reliable than IP for HD delivery", he stated. His own organisation
offered 44 HD-enabled channels on its platform out of 55 channels.
Nelson also suggested that premium-priced pay-TV had
"limited potential" in the Middle East, being restricted to a niche
audience who could afford the high monthly fees involved.
He noted that "the existing premium platforms cater to
less than a few percentage of TV households across Mena and that hasn't grown
much during the past few years" and, apart from sports, he did not
anticipate that situation changing.
Technology aside, another factor holding back the growth of
streaming content was the nature of the region's television viewing habits.
Ali Asghar Mir, managing director at media agency Integrated
Advertising Services, observed that families tended to watch TV together.
"It's unlikely that a sea change will happen unless we skip a generation
or two," he said.
In addition, with the majority of Arabic channels being
free-to-air they were more likely to be an integral part of the household.
He thought web TV would make inroads in markets like Saudi
Arabia and the UAE where both the youth demographic and broadband speeds were
higher, but in the end traditional TV, DTH platforms and web TV would be able
to co-exist.
Data sourced from Gulf News; additional content by Warc
staff
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