Pay TV provider Astro adapts to ever-changing consumer appetite

 

Starting out as a satellite TV provider, Astro’s legacy has evolved with the times as it needs to adapt to the ever-changing consumer appetite.

Facing increasing content costs and greater competition from streaming platforms, Astro is not sitting pretty waiting for subscribers to continue paying for their traditional satellite TV content.

“You have to evolve, always and constantly because your consumers have also evolved. We look at all these technological disruptions as an opportunity and challenge for us,” says Astro chief executive officer Datuk Rohana Rozhan.

What has served Astro well has been its ability to reach every household in Malaysia and that is what it wants to continue doing and has set itself a very high target by 2020.

Astro is targeting to be in 90 per cent of Malaysian households in five years’ time. To execute its business plans, it needs reach and scale.

“Customer reach is extremely important for us to get scale because scale brings with it the ability to price and compete from a cost-effective basis,” she says.

From just offering direct-to-home (DTH) linear pay TV service, Astro over the years has diversified into a provider of four streams.

The diversification is done out of need. In mature markets, more than half the content watched is non-linear, meaning people watch when they want to. The remaining 40 per cent is watched as the broadcast is shown, often for live sports, or for the older generation who are not too fussy about on-demand programming.

The proliferation of over-the-top (OTT) in mature markets and its impact on traditional pay TV companies meant that Astro had to react to changes in the marketplace, and fast.

Realising it needs to do the same, Astro has its own non-linear stream, Astro On Demand, where people can watch content at their convenience and on mobile devices.

“We are in all the worlds. We even have the mobile avenue, where we deliver OTT content to wherever our customers are,” says Rohana.

Of Astro’s 3.5 million pay TV customers, 900,000 have Astro’s Personal Video Recorder (PVR) service and it wants those customers to connect their set-top boxes to the Internet.

To date, only 350,000 PVR users have connected their PVRs to the Internet. The reason behind that migration is to get those with PVRs to purchase content on Astro’s library of title collection.

Rohana says Astro intends to use its leverage to get the latest titles and a wider collection on par with what the leading pay TV operators are enjoying. Being first to market will improve the enticement of what it is offering its subscribers.

Apart from that, Astro has ventured into e-commerce, via its 24/7 online home shopping channel, Go Shop.

Customers can watch the Go Shop TV channel, or browse and order products on the Go Shop website.

Some of the products sold on the platform includes digital and electronics, home and kitchen appliances, household, kitchenware, fitness, cosmetics, and fashion accessories.

Go Shop is expected to contribute RM1bil in total sales in five years.

Last year, Go Shop contributed a revenue of 189 million ringgit .

Astro has also launched a content-based merchandise e-commerce site, iSooka, where products associated to content aired on Astro are sold.

Part of Astro’s fundamental strategy is to drive value for households by catering to individual preferences that focus on non-linear delivery channel.