The Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) welcomed over 100 guests to its Taiwan in View conference, with Deputy Minister of Culture, Sue Wang, giving the opening remarks as the Guest of Honour.

Deputy Minister Wang highlighted the importance of the video industry in Taiwan and announced that the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Act will be revised to foster its growth.

She, according to a media release from AVIA, said that the government aims to work closely with video operators and urge them to invest more comprehensively in the video industry, beyond films and into local content creation.

She also emphasized the need to safeguard local content from piracy and admitted that the current efforts are not satisfactory. She also shared that the Ministry of Culture’s vision is to enhance the quality and availability of Taiwanese content across all platforms.

National Communications Commission (NCC) Commissioner Wang Jiang-Jia set the stage for the day’s discussions with Commissioner Wang laying out NCC priorities to support the development and growth of the local content industry.

He noted that the OTT TV Act, which had been under discussion for many years, was still being considered. However, the NCC was mindful of the need to ensure consumer protection was balanced with the constant needs for consumption of content, especially as 5G was being developed across Taiwan.

This focus on local content was reiterated during the panel on The Streaming Wars, where Daphne Yang, CEO of CATCHPLAY, stressed the importance of protecting and promoting local stories and content on both domestic and international platforms. She said that OTT players still need to work with aggregators to reach a wider audience and that there is a lack of original content in Taiwan.

Similarly, Daphne Lee, Chairperson, NMEA and Vice President of New Media Service Business, Taiwan Mobile, also said that global OTT players will be key partners to mobile operators like herself. And like many markets around the region, the cost of acquiring and producing content in Taiwan is increasing and poses a challenge for everyone.

However, the market certainly has potential for more content providers to compete and operators would like to see more quality content produced by their partners.

During his session on Upping the Local Content Game, Jay Lin, Founder & CEO, Portico Media & GagaOOLala, shared his strategy to go from niche to mainstream, or to ‘play small and go big’.

Lin also shared that in the past, platforms and IP were the only ones travelling, but the trend has now shifted to streaming travelling too. Phil Tang, President, Greener Grass Culture, is also seeing a trend where local content producers are working with local OTT platforms to bring content internationally as evidenced by the huge success of his series, ‘Copycat Killer’ on Netflix.

With Taiwan having long been one of the most important cable markets in Asia, it was interesting to hear the differing views from cable industry chiefs.

Cliff Lai, Vice Chairman, Homeplus Digital, felt that cable TV will slowly decline, and that broadband will be its salvation. He also expects more competition from broadband in the future, as it offers good transmission and affordable prices. Lai also highlighted that a stronger fight against piracy is needed to give cable TV a better outlook.

Concurrently, Steve Wang, President, Kbro Co, highlighted the lack of uniform regulation across cable TV and how that was holding back the cable industry.

The conference also took time to focus on some of the issues that are impeding the growth of the industry. Grace Shao, Head, IP & Tech Group, Baker McKenzie Taipei, Edward Lee, Secretary General, Chinese Internet Channel Community Association (CICCA) and Yeo Kok Siew, Managing Director, Warner Music Taiwan, discussed the need to have transparency and accountability in the relationship between the video industry and the music collecting associations.

Music is essential for the video industry, and there is no lack of desire to ensure rights are paid for, but the number of associations, the artists represented, and rates charged are not clear, making the subject more challenging than is seen in other markets.

Piracy has also been proliferating in Taiwan with a growing need to address the problem. Both Claudia Peng, Secretary General, Cable Broadband Institute in Taiwan (CBIT) and May Chen, Secretary General, Satellite Television Broadcasting Association (STBA) agreed that addressing online piracy, particularly via illegal set top boxes, is a matter of urgency and they urged the government to implement efficient and effective anti-piracy means such as Domain Name Service Response Policy Zones (DNS RPZ).

Taejin Lee, Senior Manager, International Development Department, Korea Copyright Protection Agency, concluded with a sense of hope by talking about the success that Korea had seen in both promoting and protecting their content.