Subscribe in a reader | Subscribe by Email I read with interest the interview with Astro's CEO on last Saturday's BizWeek section in the Star. The interview highlighted few numbers which I think is worth thinking about. Now, the accuracy of the numbers is based purely on what the CEO says, so we assume it to be true. Let's see what she said below:
CEO: There are 5.8 million TV households in Malaysia and we have about 2.2 million customers. That's about 39% household penetration. That's overall, but now we start slicing and dicing. If we look at spoken language, we have 37% penetration for the Malay language customers. For the Chinese-speaking customers, we have 48% of total Chinese households in Malaysia. For the Indian-speaking customers, we have about 68% of the total Indian customers in Malaysia.
Are all those mega serials and Kodambakam movies good for the community? I personally feel no, but the current trend shows that the community needs (or wants?) entertainment. Old folks want to watch serials, the rest watch movies or songs or the variety of shows over the 6 channels.
If we assume 4 people in an Indian household, 1.8 million will translate to 450,000 households. 68% of that is 306,000. Meaning there are roughly 306,000 Indian houses that has Astro!
CEO: The next way of slicing and dicing is to look at the rural and urban segments because people in the two segments look for different content. We have 51% of total urban households in Malaysia about 17% of rural households.
This seems clear cut. Those in the urban areas are more educated and exposed to global issues. Thus, with higher disposable income, they are able to subscribe to Astro packages. Those in the rural areas may feel satisfied with the local Malay programs and not interested in global issues or international channels.
CEO:Simplistically, our growth for the past year has been from the Malay customers. In our last quarter, we added 94,000 customers, of which 10,000 are Indian customers and the balance are primarily Malay households. And that has been the trend for the last couple of quarters.
If you ask me who will be our next 1 million customers, they will be predominantly Malay households and more and more semi-urban. We've already got 51% penetration in the urban areas and we have to know that we will be going more into the semi-urban to rural market.
What that means to us is one thing – our sales and distribution network will have to be realigned. If it's predominantly urban today, we've got to shift that to where our next customers will be, by geography and by the marketplace that we're looking at.
Indians are still subscribing to Astro, but soon the market will become stagnant as the subscription rate increases to 80% or more. Then, we can see more segmentation – mini packages to cater for various subgroups and ages.
CEO: For instance, we are very strong in Chinese content. Among our 645,000 Chinese-speaking customers, we have a viewership rating of 80-odd%, which means more than 80% of the time, a Chinese-speaking customer is watching Astro. So, only less than 20% is spent watching free-to-air. It's even higher for the Indian-speaking market – 90% of the time, they're watching channels such as Vaanavil, Sun TV and Vellithirai. They are watching Astro. Our issue now is the Malay customers. They come on to Astro because they like the fact that it is a multi-channel platform and all that, but the free-to-air TV is fairly strong. Our viewership number for the Malay customers is about 55%. Since they form 1.1million of our total households to date, which is half, our challenge is to increase our relevance and viewership among our Malay customers.
This seems to reinforce my suspicion that the average Indian has nothing to watch in free channels and is regularly glued to Astro whenever he/she has a chance. Same goes for the Chinese. Astro have them covered, now is to target the Malay market. Thus we can see more concentrated efforts to capture the semi-urban and rural households, and at the same time try to increase the viewership from 55%.
In addition, we'll look at the Astro brand. What is the Astro brand? What is its value proposition? At which point does the Astro brand extend to other areas? Recently, we launched AstroView (an entertainment magazine, previously called Astro Guide, that serves as a viewing guide for Astro subscribers) because we see it as an extension of the Astro TV experience.
The CEO forgot to mention that the magazine is not free after being relaunched as AstroView. Its free for a period of time, and then the customers will be charged.
Full interview is at http://biz.thestar.com.my/bizweek/story.asp?file=/2007/12/15/bizweek/19771336&sec=bizweek
I smell something fishy here.
ASTRO has been very thorough in compiling these statistics. It looks like they are actually trying to look for a way to earn more money from their loyal subscribers.
I am quite upset that ASTRO only recently started charging for SUNTV drama serials. They must have planned it very carefully. Get all the indians addicted to the serials. Then charge them for it. This is grossly unfair of them. ASS-THROW is playing a dirty and cunning game. Very un-gentleman conduct.
Boo to you ASS-THROW.