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 Around 70% of the Middle East and North Africa’s TV-owning households will be getting multi-channel satellite or cable television, according to a report from Informa.
The research firm estimated that the Mena region had around 76 million TV’d up households at the end of 2008, with 59% of them getting satellite at the moment, and a small but growing number on cable/IPTV.
By 2014 the total number of households on satellite, cable or IPTV over broadband will be up to 50 million, or 70% of the total TV-owning population. As at the moment, satellite will be dominant, but cable and IPTV will see significant growth, albeit from a tiny base.
Currently pay TV subscriptions are pretty negligible, with just 11% of households actually shelling out, and the vast majority of them from Turkey and... the Place We’re Not Going To Mention. This leaves just over 2 million pay-TV households over the rest of Mena – which ain’t a lot.
According to a report by IPTV News, the Informa report says the vast number of free-to-air channels available to viewers in the region, including over satellite, has created a cultural mindset that “expects to receive a wide range of TV services without payment”.
Unfortunately, of course, this “never mind the quality, feel the width!” approach does rather hamper the development of quality programming. According to WorldScreen.com
(whose article does manage to confuse “multi-channel” with “pay-TV”), Nilesat expect to see around 1,000 free-to-air satellite channels by 2012, up from 500 now and 100 at the start of 2004.
More worrying, WorldScreen.com states that advertising revenues are not growing as fast as the number of TV channels available, meaning everyone’s fighting for a smaller slice of the pie.
We’re guessing that the 1,000-channel figure from Nilesat won’t in fact become reality, and that there will be something of a cull, especially in the current grim economic situation.
While losing channels, etc, is never ideal, the thought of that number of FTA broadcasters, all on a pittance of advertising revenue and with no subscription money to make up for it, is quite disturbing.
But probably not quite as disturbing as what they’ll be broadcasting.
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