Channel 9 expanding entertainment content

From this quarter, the proportion of entertainment content at Modernine TV - Channel 9 - will increase from 24 per cent to 32 per cent.

The move will help the SET-listed broadcaster maintain revenue in the third quarter, which is the low season for the TV industry.

Meanwhile, Wasan said MCOT's executive board, which was appointed recently, would consider the proposal submitted two months ago by pay-TV operator TrueVisions urging permission from MCOT, the license owner, to run advertisements on its programs and earn revenue from those commercials. The cable-TV operator offered revenue sharing at the rate of 6.5 per cent of total ad revenues to MCOT.

Wasan said MCOT moving toward more entertainment content complies with the 2008 Broadcasting Act. The act allows broadcasters that hold commercial TV licences o broadcast entertainment content up to a maximum of 70 per cent, with the remaining 30 per cent news and documentaries.

The newly appointed MCOT board agreed with the move, he said.

"'Fun, knowledgeable and creative' has become the motto of the station right now. But it is still under the concept of a TV station producing quality content for audiences,'' Wasan said. He added that the station aimed at expanding the viewer base from children and adults to teenagers, "first-jobbers" and adult females. Entertainment programmes are the most favourable for these new groups of audiences, he said.

"News and documentaries are still our core content, at 40 per cent, and have contributed lucrative income to the station. Evening news in particular generated nearly 200million baht in revenue in the first half of the year, jumping by 80 per cent year-on-year," Wasan said. The company projects that revenue from news will double to Bt800 million by the end this year from last year.

MCOT reported better-than-expected business performance in the second quarter. Its total revenues rose by 29 per cent year-on-year to Bt1.19 billion and net profit jumped by 68 per cent to Bt406 million, due largely to a 45-per-cent revenue growth in TV business.

As for the first half period, it reported 20-per-cent growth in total revenue to Bt2.1 billion, and net profit rose by 36 per cent to Bt641 million.

Wasan said that Modernine had successfully raised its market share in TV ad expenditure from 14.7 per cent in December last year to about 20 per cent in June this year.

The station's audience share also reached 10.6 per cent as of June, after Channel 7's 44.7 per cent and Channel 3's 25.4 per cent, according to media research AGB Nielsen.

Wasan said that MCOT by the end of this year wanted to maintain the channel's market share in local TV ad expenditure at 20 per cent and at about 10 per cent in audience share.

An analyst said it was difficult for MCOT to move to other ways except focusing more on entertainment content. It could not increase airtime utilisation since it was as high as 93 per cent in the second quarter, compared with 79 per cent in the previous quarter.