Thai content providers eye AEC

The trend has recently begun to pick up pace, given the implementation of the Asean Economic Community (AEC) at the turn of the last year.

Driven by the birth of 24 digital terrestrial-TV channels nearly two years ago, the Kingdom’s new TV broadcasters have been busy negotiating with local production houses and advertisers to select the right TV formats for their target audiences. 

“International formats, both big and small, will continue to be popular among all broadcasters and sponsorship prices will also continue to increase due to heavy licensing and production costs,” media expert Pathamawan Sathaporn, the managing director of Mindshare Thailand, said recently. 

However, she explained that while digital-TV channels were still heavily dependent on finished content from content owners across the globe, some TV broadcasters and content producers were now placing more emphasis on building local intellectual property for regional distribution, particularly now that the AEC was in place. 

Noppakorn Thongman, founder of Entertainment Lab – a local production house – said that from his working experience with leading media production houses like Endemol and FrementleMedia, he understood that creating the right TV format meant long-term investment in monetising content copyright. 

“I would like to work with local broadcasters to co-produce TV formats and my company would help distribute the format in overseas markets via Global Agency, the international content distributor,” he added.

Entertainment Lab has created its own game-show format called “Golden Scale”, which was broadcast last year via Thairath TV digital station.

Through Global Agency’s network, this new TV format has since been presented to potential prospects in Asia and the US, with distribution negotiations under way, Noppakorn said.

Entertainment Lab is also working with MCOT to co-create another game show called “ID Luck Number”, which is scheduled to be aired on MCOT’s Channel 9 next month.

Noppakorn added that this format was co-owned by his company and MCOT for global distribution. 

“I want to encourage local broadcasters to be involved with this type of creative production, before taking those TV formats to overseas markets,” he said. 

Izzet Pinto, chief executive officer of Global Agency, said his company had received a number of TV programme proposals from Thai production houses every year.

However, they tended to be paper-based projects, which were considered less attractive than projects that had already been screened, he added.

Meanwhile, Zense Entertainment chairman and CEO Varavuth Jentanakul said he and his company had reached a key milestone on the road to becoming a content producer for export. 

“Since 2011, two years after our establishment, my team and I have been developing our own TV formats for export to neighbouring countries. We expect to export at least two programmes in Southeast Asia in the next two or three years,” he said. 

Zense Entertainment’s own-format programmes are “Jedsarati”, a variety show; “Code Hunter”, a drama series; “Honeymoon Flight”, a variety talk show; and “Ban Praram 4”, a news variety show.

It has also created game shows such as “Horo Game” and “Asean Together”, and a situation comedy titled “Ha Company Unlimited”. 

Workpoint Entertainment is also working on creating its own formats to offer to international distributors.

The company’s hot formats include “Fan Pan Tae” and “SME Tee Taek”.