Blue Ant Media’s Carlyn Staudt and Jon Penn Break Down the Asia TV Scene, Business Opportunities in an Industry Slowdown and Life Without Beach House Pictures (EXCLUSIVE)

Carlyn Staudt , who has previously overseen the growth of Blue Ant Media 's Love Nature channel, travels to the APOS conference for the first time in her new role as the company's EVP of global channels and streaming. Together with Jon Penn, the group's MD for Asia Pacific, she takes stock of the corporate restructurings that include the disposal of Beach House Pictures and the establishment of a sales hub in Asia, as well as analyzing the business opportunities at a moment of industry turmoil.

Explain the thinking behind the Asian hub Staudt: I joined Blue Ant seven years ago to expand its channel offering around the globe, and launched love nature, which was at the time, a fledgling natural history service, for SVOD only. We've expanded it around the globe to over 100 countries and had success on multiple different platforms, pay-TV, VOD, FAST. That helped feel that we need to be a global media company, more internationally than just in Canada.

We started on the Americas and EMEA, but had largely relied on agents in Asia. About two years ago decided that boots on the ground and expanding Blue Ant into Asia was the right thing to do. That led to Jon's hiring. And we were excited to ask what Blue Ant could do, not only in channels, but in content sales. The integrated sales hub meets the platform needs where they were in the market.

Penn: As everyone knows we're in a highly disrupted marketplace, and that's no different in Asia Pacific. That disruption causes two things. One is that it puts pressure on incumbent businesses, some of whom are our clients. But it also gives rise to a whole new class of potential customers.

In China, for example, the VOD platforms like Bytedance, Bilibili, iQiyi, Tencent and Youku have turned the market on its head. There's huge opportunities there for factual program makers, like us.

In Australia, my home country, the market is also transforming. Our two big partners, Foxtel and Fetch, are having to change to be able to meet the challenge of disruption that comes with almost unlimited choice posed by the internet.

How is it going? Penn: We've been going a year. We have transitioned agency arrangements back in Asia and in Australia to be entirely in house. We've hired three people, including me, and we have a fourth person who works for me, based out of Toronto.

We've done some, pretty exciting deals. We have a really good and growing partnership with Fetch (previously owned by Astro, now owned by Telstra). We now have five channels on Fetch. Our premium Love Nature linear pay channel is on Fetch, behind the paywall. And all four of our FAST channels sit in front of the paywall on Fetch, generating advertising revenue. Fetch has gone into FAST in only the last year or two, so, they've adapted that business model to include FAST channels.

We've also opened up Love Nature in the last few months as well for premium sponsorship and advertising.

And with Foxtel, we have placed Nature Time, our FAST channel, behind Foxtel's paywall [in August]. That's different, because it's the first time we've put a FAST channel behind a paywall in the region. And it's also among the first few times that Foxtel has taken a FAST channel behind its paywall. And the first time where they've also been involved in selling the advertising on the channel.

We're also really thrilled that our Love Nature channel is number one amongst all factual channels on the Astro platform.

We are really working hard to be agile and nimble and very creative in the way that we work, to be a low overhead type of outfit. Everything is centralized in terms of programming and operational support. And because of that, we're able to move quickly and do things differently. That has helped us sort of work through this disruptive, but exciting media landscape.

The other big upheaval in Asia must have been the selling of Beach House Pictures? Staudt: About a year ago, we acquired a production company out of Canada called MarbleMedia and decided to consolidate our studio business under Marble. And when we did that, it was a very concerted effort to focus on the North American market, for the time being, in production.

We didn't own all of Beach House, so when we disposed of our portion , it was more to focus the company. But at the same time, we knew we were launching this integrated sales hub in Asia, so we weren't exiting the region entirely. We were actually investing in the region, just in a different way.

Penn: And we're still partnering up with Beach House for distribution of the rights that we held before the transaction took place.

Same logic for selling the stake in NHNZ? Staudt: We were supportive of Dame Julie Christie wanting to take a bigger ownership of that business, and sold our minority to her entirely . So, that reflects the same strategy of focusing our production business for the time being and growing APAC in a different way.

We're still in production with Beach House and NHNZ on a number of projects. It's just that we aren't involved at an ownership level.

Penn: Also, we do also bring TV formats into the region. For example, we recently licensed the jury murder trial format to New Zealand's Great Southern Television Production.

Do you foresee expansion of your channels business through acquisition or organic launches? Penn: We are just getting on with expanding the distribution for our premium natural history channel, Love Nature, which has a lot further to go. We're interested in markets like Vietnam and the Philippines, and further distribution in Taiwan and Hong Kong. And we're also considering the formulation of other potential, actual pay channels.

The whole time that I've been here, we've been active placing our FAST channels in Australia. Now, the interest in Asia is really starting to take off, and partly it's coming from an under-the-radar area which is the connected TV space.

That's an area that's not necessarily fully appreciated as being both a customer base for content providers and also just a lot of activity. If you look at Samsung TV Plus and Google TV, the connected TV manufacturers are really motoring ahead. A new flat screen set from really, any of those makers, sets you up with a really amazing non-subscription content offering.

How are you approaching China, which is a heavily regulated market? Penn: Well, one thing they love is premium factual content. And we have a small business there which we wish to grow. It is a medium-term goal of mine to build a bigger business in China.

The question for us is, can we co-produce in China. Obviously, others are coproducing there. And Beach House has been very active in coproducing in China in the past. So, I think the opportunity is there. We just need to work out how to how would we address it.

We do have a big commissioning channel, which is Love Nature, which has budget to spend and is telling global stories. And there's some fantastic stories in China. Watch this space.

Does your strategy include India? India particularly needs to be addressed with a very Indian strategy. It is highly fragmented, so lots of potential partners. But very low ARPU. Again, we're only 12 months in and only starting to scratch the surface of the Indian marketplace. It's another one with a with a hopeful tick against it.

A lot of companies are in trouble or slowing their businesses. How is that shaking out? Penn: It's obviously tough times for many companies in the industry, but I think also there's opportunity for things to be reformulated and recombined, and different creative solutions to be had.

All I hear about Hollywood is it's very slow in terms of production. It's just there's not much production taking place. If you sort of think about Hollywood as the epicenter of the global entertainment industry, which we do. Tough times in lots of different ways, but certainly in relation to crew, crewing productions and freelance work and projects moving ahead, I think it's been pretty brutal 12 months or 18 months. So yeah, perhaps a little bit of a reduction in in the size of the bubble, that's been with us for the last few years. But perhaps that's a good thing too.