Hong Kong-based pay-TV platform Now TV, which itself has been steadily ramping up investment in its own in-house content, has recently launched three channels with a heavy focus on exclusive content from mainland China via a series of joint-venture deals.

“There is a vast amount of undervalued content coming out of the mainland,” says Janice Lee, Now TV’s managing director of TV and new media.

“We see an opportunity because they haven’t been packaged for Hong Kong consumption or regional consumption, but the quality and quantity is there.”

These give Now three new genres to add to its own portfolio that can be sold abroad: drama with Now Hairun, a tie-up with privately owned mainland production company Hairun Media & Entertainment; movies with Now Popcorn, a venture with three film producers and distributors (Huayi Brothers, Peter Chan’s Shine Focus and Edko Films); and variety with Now Mango, run with Hunan Broadcast System, one of China’s largest broadcasters.

Now will localize these channels for distribution in Hong  Kong as well as other markets on behalf of its partners, while also seeking export opportunities for its own suite of owned and operated channels.

Bigger diaspora

Lee sees opportunities for subscription-based offerings targeting ethnic Chinese in places such as Singapore and Malaysia, as well as in countries further afield that are becoming popular destinations for Chinese emigration such as Australia and North America.

The rationale for the deals however is the immediate opportunity in Hong Kong, with additional revenue from other markets seen as a nice bonus.

“We’re the guinea pig,” Lee says. “These channels must work for us before we can sell them. We have an interest in making sure they work for our own market.”

It’s a familiar model, but so far only TVB has made serious inroads to the worldwide Chinese community. That is changing however.

Beyond program sales

Singapore broadcaster MediaCorp has packaged together an international version of Channel 8, its Mandarin-language channel, securing carriage so far in Australia, Indonesia and the US.

MediaCorp already sells its dramas to markets such as Cambodia, China, Malaysia and Vietnam, and plans to use its channel to promote its content elsewhere.

“Carriage deals are relatively new to us, and this will be our focus in markets where content deals are not strong,” says Tang Yun Leung, VP of content distribution for MediaCorp Studios.

“However, those two business models are not mutually exclusive, and we would certainly like to penetrate both the carriage and content markets.”