ATF 2008 - Daily Report - Day 2
Some tips to be successful in the Asian markets

By Fabricio Ferrara

The second day of ATF in Singapore, Thursday December 11 th, was stronger than the first one, as more acquisition executives visited the market looking for high quality content. Prensario has spoken with buyers from Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Hong Kong, and some of them were really impressed about the programming supply at the event.

How is evolving the Asian Market according to some content distributors? The Asian buyers are making good efforts in order to know more about the programs. Now, they are concerned about ratings levels and general information about the evolution of the program (series, telenovelas, etc.) in the local markets, before buying it.

Xavier Aristimuño, VP Sales and International Business development at Telemundo International (USA), assures that the Asian Market is ‘mature' nowadays. ‘Some time ago, the companies used to buy lot of content after seeing some demos, but now they search a bit more before taking the decision. Prior to purchasing a program, they focus on three main points: first, the story of the telenovela; second, the actors and actresses -they already known them very well-; and third, the quality of the program'. Aristimuño points out that ‘Asian buyers are looking for more sophisticated stories for all the family, and this a big change we saw in the last years'.

One highlighted tip of the Asian buyers is “loyalty”. A worldwide distributor explains: ‘Once they buy you a program, they continue coming to see you and that's why it's important to have strong presence in every market -specially the Asian ones- and to know very well its needs. All the Asian countries seem to be the same, but the idiosyncrasy, habits and religions are pretty different in every territory'.

Formats or finished programming? According to another distributor, buyers are very interested on formats: ‘Asian buyers come to the booth asking for fresh stories to be produced in their local markets. Most of them want to make co-production alliances for fiction formats'. On behalf of finished programming, there is a good chance with new media players ‘because they want programs to be run on every platform, from IPTV to Internet TV and Mobile'.