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8TV
Summary:
8TV, with its tagline “We’re Different”, reaches out to urban youth and Chinese audiences.
Profile:
8TV, with its tagline “We’re Different”, reaches out to urban youth and Chinese audiences. The channel, owned by Media Prima, offers a mix of local and foreign content, including U.S. titles such as FlashForward, The Vampire Diaries and Desperate Housewives (season six). 8TV also runs Asian titles such as Korea’s My Fair Lady, Hong Kong drama War of In-Laws II and Japanese My Boys. 8TV’s highest viewership is in Chinese-speaking households, where viewership share for Chinese 4+ audience peaked at 20% for January to March 2010. 8TV’s overall audience share among Malaysia’s free-TV and pay-TV households is steady at 5%. Flagship titles include One In A Million (1 million viewers for finale), awards show Shout! Awards and I Wanna Be A Model (three seasons).
Local Production:
8TV took to the streets in December 2009 for new dance show, Showdown 2010. The street dancing reality talent contest premieres on 8TV on 31 March 2010 in a prime time 9.30pm slot on Wednesdays. Cross country auditions in five locations kick off in January. "Malaysia's local hip hop and street dance scene has grown by leaps and bounds... Street dancing deserves more respect and attention from the public," station GM Lam Swee Kim said.
Who's who:
Ahmad Izham Omar Executive Director
Lam Swee Kim General Manager
Address:
Metropolitan TV Sdn Bhd
Sri Pentas, 3rd Floor, South Wing
Persiaran Bandar Utama
Bandar Utama, 47800 Petaling Jaya
Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
T: +60 3 7728 8282
F: +60 3 7726 8282
W: www.8tv.com.my
Schedule Analysis:
Malaysian terrestrial station 8TV broadcasts 20 hours daily (6pm-2am) and targets urban youth and Chinese audiences.
The current offering is a 40:60 mix of local (includes in-house) and foreign general entertainment content, including Chinese drama from Taiwan, English-language entertainment from the U.S. and Korean drama series.
The overall weekly October schedule is pretty much dominated by drama series (over 60 hours/43%), followed by entertainment/variety (36 hours/26%) and reality competition-based programmes (10 hours/7%).
The rest of the colourful schedule is made up of game shows (6.5 hours/4.6%), travel/food (5 hours/3.5%), reality-docu series (3.5 hours/2.5%), movies (3.5 hours/2%), talk shows (1 hour/1%), current affairs (0.5 hours/0.35%) and sports entertainment (0.5 hours/0.35%).
The three most-watched shows currently are classic legend/folktale Journey to the West drama series and reality competition series Ultimate Power Group and Showdown 2010.
8TV’s 2011 lineup includes returning series such as The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Ten Things I Hate About You, American Idol (season 10) and The American Music Awards.
Premiering titles for 2011 include Hollywood’s Hellcats, Pretty Little Liars and Criminal Minds: Suspect Behaviour.
2011’s local slate consists of food show Best in the World, Tales of Darkness (about the bizarre and unknown), travel show Bantai Asia and the return of Shout! Awards.
8TV will also feature Hong Kong TVB’s drama series Rosy Business, Beyond the Realm of Conscience, Catch Me Now and Last One Standing. Korean titles include He’s Beautiful, Personal Taste and Dong Yi.
Programmers say they are expecting a heavier local programming mix for 2011, according to 8TV’s general manager, Lam Swee Kim.
Lam says local productions are more able to garner higher rates and create more room for sponsorship and branding. There is also more chance (or legs) for local products to travel beyond traditional TV to online and on-ground presence, she adds.
The reassurance is that there are still (positive) signs that 8TV will continue to buy international product but obviously acquisition will drop slightly (for the next 12 months).
Lam’s remaining spending power for 2011 is skewed to fringe time afternoon on weekdays and weekend mornings. She’s particularly keen on first-run rights and local content for these slots.
8TV generally schedules Chinese content in the daytime and English-language/urban-related content from 9.30pm onwards.
The station allocates two different set of primetimes for its targeted Chinese and urban demographics. Chinese primetime starts from 7pm to 9.30pm daily and urban primetime is from 9.30pm to midnight.
Overall, the 7pm-11.30pm daily slots attract the most viewers.
In terms of viewing trend, Lam says that urban youth are now watching later in the night and going online for catch-up TV, hence online TV rights remain as one of the keys in the 8TV offerings, Lam says.
ContentAsia #107 Issue (November 8-21, 2010)
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