Local pay-TV services are seeing green, according to Singapore Business Review (SBR). In the Connected Life study conducted by Kantar TNS, a market research company, more than 75% of Singaporeans watch online videos, which is slightly higher than the number of viewers watching traditional broadcast TV(71%). Of which, 18% watch paid-subscription on their traditional TV such as Netflix. The difference might seem marginal, but it represents an unpleasant reality to conventional services that have dominated the field for the past few decades.
According to Singapore Business Review, StarHub pay-TV subscribers dropped 1.5%, losing 11,000 pay-TV subscribers. With the myriad of media-entertainment services already online and never ending stream of upcoming programs, it is unsurprising that these statistics continue to haunt traditional pay-TV services. Not only is Netflix catching up in this race, but also competitors like Youtube, who are trying to usher in paid-content/subscription with Youtube Red.
This might not be all doom-and-gloom as many still do subscribe to local TV providers for channels that are otherwise not presented on Netflix. SBR pointed out that Netflix might need to include more localised content to attract a larger field of Singaporeans. Despite the endless variety of fresh content on Netflix, local tv subscriptions are here to stay. Ultimately, paid-TV subscriptions will still appeal a larger demographic given the wider range of programmes such as sports channels and local Asian content that are not available on Netflix.
In that sense, the lack of diverse content might result in Netflix’s eventual diminishing success—especially due to the absence of “comprehensive local language content and sports content” which is a key differentiating factor for local paid TV subscribers.
