Players adapt to competition

These developments follow the increased penetration of KU-band and C-band satellite dishes in the Kingdom, which are expected to replace territorial antennas in 50 per cent of households by the end of this year. In the next three years, industry observers expect the penetration of cable and satellite TV will reach 80 per cent of all households.
“There is more room to grow in the satellite TV business, particularly with C-band dishes, so there are many satellite broadcast providers trying to penetrate this segment,” Dew Waratangtagoon, managing director of GMM Broadcasting at GMM Grammy, told The Nation.
Given the current situation, Dew said developing set-top boxes able to plug into all kinds of satellite sets should be right way for broadcasters to expand their customer base.
“As a newcomer in the satellite TV business, this is also an important marketing strategy for 1 Sky,” |he said.
True Life Plus, a convergence service provider for True Corp’s subsidiaries True Move, True Online and TrueVisions, this week launched a new set-top box that can plug into all satellite sets.
The company expects to sell 600,000 boxes over the next year and expand TrueVisions’ customer base.
Another feature that satellite TV operators believe will attract more customers is channel grouping, offered free to content providers. This feature was used for the first time by GMM Grammy at the launch of 1 Sky in September, aiming to penetrate a market that has been dominated by PSI Holdings for more than two decades with almost 50 per cent of the C-Band dishes in the Kingdom.

DISH CLUB
Yesterday, the Satellite Dish Club introduced the same offer to content providers. Niran Tangpiroontham, managing director of Infosat and president of the Satellite Dish Club, said channel grouping would apply to satellite sets of Infosat, iDeaSat, Thai Sat and Leo Sat, which account for 40-50 per cent of the dishes in the country.
Meanwhile Adisak Limparung-pattanakij, president and chief executive officer of Nation Broadcasting Corp, said the number of satellite TV channels on the C-band platform increased from 90 channels to 155 this year, up by 60 per cent.
In the coming year, he expects about a 30-per-cent rise in the number of new channels, with more |segments.
For example, leading music and entertainment company GMM Grammy’s publishing unit is diversifying into satellite TV, providing lifestyle programmes to expand its audience base, especially men.
GMM Grammy has budgeted Bt100 million for this channel, while editorial teams from Maxim, In, Madame Figaro, Her World and Attitude magazines will be responsible for Maxxi TV.
Amorn Vision also launched MEN TV, worth about Bt40 million, screening on DTV’s channel 28.
Adisak said news channels would play a key role in satellite TV next year because leading newspapers such as the Bangkok Post, Krungthep Turakij, Matichon and Daily News planned to introduce their own satellite channels along with GMM Grammy to create “The News”.
“With more segments, advertisers will be able to spend their money more effectively on adverts beaming directly to targeted customers,” he said.