BEC banking on sports programmes to help ratings this year
Bangkok Entertainment Company (BEC) has high hopes of sports programmes shoring up TV ratings and advertising revenue on top of top-rated dramas this year after the news-show category experienced a slowdown due to intense competition and the impact from t
“Live sports programmes will be one of the key drivers boosting ratings for Channel 3 and its affiliate networks this year,” Surin Krittiyaphongphun, executive vice president of BEC, said yesterday.
BEC plans to air big sports competitions such as the Uefa (Union of European Football Associations) championship from France between June 10 and July 10, the FIVB Volleyball World Grand Prix Final in July, and the Summer Olympic Games from Rio de Janeiro from August 5-21.
These live programmes will be telecast via Channel 3 HD and Channel 3SD, except the Olympic Games, which Channel 3 will co-broadcast with other key members of the Thai TV Pool.
Meanwhile, the company has also acquired the broadcasting rights to the 2016 MotoGP World Championship for the second consecutive year. This world-class motorcycle-racing event will be broadcast on Channel 3SD (digital TV channel No 28) from this month until November.
Surin acknowledged that the TV broadcasting industry was likely to see intense competition while advertising expenditure seems to be slowing down.
According to Nielsen (Thailand), advertising spending in the first two months of this year posted a 6.73-per-cent drop to Bt16.5 billion from Bt17.69 billion in the same period last year. Both analog and digital terrestrial TV channels were hurt, with year-on-year declines of 12.83 and 9.07 per cent respectively.
After the conviction of Sorrayuth in the Rai Som scandal, Channel 3 took a bit of a hit from cancellations by some advertisers on three news programmes that used to be hosted by Sorrayuth, Surin said. However, he said the news department was adjusting some strategies to make sure that those news shows were able to maintain their ratings.
Apart from its flagship station, BEC World is putting more focus on two digital TV channels, Channel 3SD and 3 Family, by adding more content to both. It says half of total airtime will be for fresh content.
Through this strategy, the company targets revenue growth of at least 3-5 per cent this year.
