The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A SENIOR Cable Bahamas executive yesterday competition and programming costs were impacting its ability to source all the TV content its subscribers desire.

David Burrows, the BISX-listed communications provider’s marketing manager, speaking at a forum it had organised, said: “There is a tremendous amount of competition these days with regard to who is getting which content.

“We’re negotiating for content networks, and negotiating for content, against whether it’s Netflix, whether it’s Hulu Plus, whether it’s Fox, whether it’s HBO, whether it’s Showtime. Everyone is competing for content, everyone’s developing content. There is content that we may be getting that somebody already has a licence for in the region; that’s another player.”

Mr Burrows said the cut-throat competition for programming content meant Cable Bahamas and other regional players face “issues from time to time”. He added: “For example, if we were to go back to Hallmark channel, the service could no longer be distributed to our country.

“But we knew that our subscribers were very interested in the particular content on Hallmark. So while the channel could not be distributed, the content that Hallmark itself owns, that Hallmark itself invests in, could be distributed.”

As a result, Mr Burrows said Cable Bahamas signed an agreement with Hallmark two years’ ago and “purchased” this content for its Bahamian subscribers via a relationship it plans to continue.

“We had a channel, CineCanal, that we lost last year,” he added. “We went out and purchased 40 movies for this season. We started playing in November of last year and we have a contract for a year for that content.”

Noting that the emergence of online streaming services such as Netflix have dramatically changed the Bahamian TV market over the past ten years, Mr Burrows said: “The strategy that we’re working on right now is repackaging and saying: ‘How do you want to purchase content?’

“The way you’re purchasing content right now is you’re going out and saying: ‘I would like to have Netflix, but I still would like to have a package that’s just for my kids. So in the way that our system is currently set up, you have to have this gateway package before you can go to this other premium service.

“What we are proposing right now is taking away that gateway, so that our customers can say: ‘I have my basic service; I’m just going to go and buy HBO. I’m just going to go and buy kids programming or family programming,” he continued.

“So we’re we’re kind of reimagining television based on the landscape that we’re currently in, making it even less expensive for customers, for example, to get a service like HBO. They don’t have a gateway product that they have to get first.”

Javier Figueras, HBO’s corporate vice-president of affiliate relations for Latin America, agreed that such a “windowing model” was changing. He said: “Getting content in the Caribbean has been very challenging due to the fact of mainly the owners of the content, the studios, they have a business model that involves windowing.

“That means movies will go first to the movie theatres. Then it will go on to the home video. Then it will go to the premium channels and then we’ll go to basic ad-supported channels. It’s been very challenging, but I must say that in the last five years it’s been a tremendously huge advancement that has been done not only at the HBO channel, but also at supporter channels.

Mr Figueras said Latin American content producers tend to lump the English-speaking Caribbean with these services, but added that HBO was working on a solution for this. He said HBO launched HBO Caribbean in 2011 due to the complaints about Spanish commercials and content being shown in English-speaking jurisdictions.

“It is not an easy fix,” he added. “But I do believe with the digital conversations, with the streaming of the platforms that we’re talking about that we’re seeing, this is something that will definitely be on the table for the next few years, and definitely market disruptions are going to happen and this dispersion of much of the content is also going to happen.

“So you will see content all over the place. You will be able to offer the Bahamians the precise content that they really want in their language.”