22 - 28 February 2001

Niche markets in digital television

by David Kelleher

The convergence of the Internet, wireless technology and television has provided an added impetus for the television industry. With many stations and production houses looking for other revenue streams,
targeting niche markets is the key to success.
In fact, these niche markets are proving to be highly lucrative and with many households in Europe switching to digital technology, the possibilities are enormous.
This is exactly what one local TV production company in Malta aims to do – provide high quality programming targeted at two niche markets: the German speaking community outside their native country and the betting industry.
The Malta Business Weekly spoke to Andreas F. Forsthuber, managing director of the Malta Satellite Broadcasting Centre about its plans to attract foreign investment to Malta and to tap the digital TV industry.
“Malta has a lot of potential and is very attractive to foreign investors in this expanding industry,” Mr Forsthuber said.
“Geographically, and from a satellite point of view, Malta can reach more satellites than say other companies in central or eastern Europe. Secondly, the Business Promotion Act which has been passed by Parliament only recently will undoubtedly help to attract more investors, even more so since TV has been
earmarked as a target industry.
Other incentives and tax benefits complete the picture,” he said.
MSBC Ltd has already helped a number of projects to relocate to Malta and it is planning to offer pay-TV packages and a music channel. The company has two projects in the pipeline which are expected to be launched within the coming months.
The first is TeleD, a pay-TV in German, which will produce and transmit programmes in German for German-speaking people outside their native country.
“Our target market in this case is German descendants or German speakers in central America and other countries. They lack German entertainment programmes and so we want to provide them on a pay-TV basis such material.
“We have already established a number of contacts with German TV channels and hope to offer “Best of German programming” to these audiences. From our market research, there are approximately six million possible buyers. We hope to have launched the service by summer,” Mr Forsthuber told The Malta Business Weekly.
The second project is UBeTV, which will be a betting channel providing information for all types of punters.
“Malta is becoming a home base for betting and we feel that there is a very large market that requires up-to-date and reliable information on all activities and events that people bet on. I must stress here that this is not another betting channel but a betting news channel,” Mr Forsthuber said.

He added that the channel will carry news and previews of events being held as well as providing all the results as they come in. The channel will carry reports on sports, politics/business, film or music awards and other events. “The channel will act as a portal for the betting operator. We are not competing with betting companies but providing a services to the punter.”
MSBC will be working with various news networks to put together high quality projects. These will then be broadcast from here. The company will also be teaming up with local production houses which have spare production capacity.
“All programming will be broadcast via satellite and sold exclusively to cable and pay-TV networks. We are close to signing a number of agreements, that will bring the channel from the start to 60-70 per cent of German households. With the rapid growth of digital TV reception, the market potential is enormous,” Mr Forsthuber said.
MSBC is starting to recruit the team and they are studying three possible locations to set up base.
“We expect to start off with around 35 people, going up to
70 when the operation is fully-
operational. Malta has a lot of skilled and trained personnel, so finding technical staff is not expected to be a problem. With regards to those who will be presenting or doing the voice overs native German speakers will have to be recruited. However, where possible Maltese people will be employed,” Mr Forsthuber said. MSBC is currently waiting for a broadcasting licence which will open up numerous other opportunities for the company. “The authorities have been extremely helpful. With the licence under our belt, I am sure that Malta can get quite a good share of the market, a market which can only grow,” he added.