VietNam Life Style: channels

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Cable TV operators race to meet demand

HCM CITY — Cable television operators are sinking big money to stay ahead of what is a highly competitive field but consumers, who have got used to a good thing, are demanding more and more.

Ha Noi Cable Television (HCATV), which now has 55,000 subscribers and has been growing since its launch in 2002, offers 18 Vietnamese and foreign channels.

Its biggest competitor is Viet Nam Television's VCTV, which launched in 1996 and offers 65 channels, including 21 international channels like Arirang, CNN, HBO and Star Movies.

Both have invested a lot of money to produce quality entertainment programmes.

In HCM City, the two leading providers, HTVC and SCTV, offer their own cultural programmes for both children and youngsters on channels like SaoTV, Yan TV, Yeah 1 TV, and HTVC Shopping.

Yan TV and Yeah 1 TV have Americans and Koreans producing reality shows like Style and Star, Yan Special-Yan Live, and Sao 24/7, which have become popular.

Le Dinh Cuong, a senior official at HCATV, says: "To attract more customers, we have to improve the quality of our programmes to meet the increasing demand of audiences, especially youngsters."

However, subscribers remain unsated with the quality of programmes, signal, and after-sales service.

Vu Thuy Ha, a subscriber in Ha Noi, says: "My provider, HCATV, offers a dozen entertainment programmes but most of them are old and poor.

"It rehashes film programmes, music, and dance in Vietnamese and foreign languages that were produced two decades ago."

SCTV subscribers have an even bigger complaint – that channels are arbitrarily taken off without notifying them about the reason.

Nguyen Le Son, who lives in HCM City's District 3, says: "For example, my favourite channel was Travel and Living but it was removed earlier this year.

"This causes customers to lose trust in the provider."

VCTV general director Nguyen Quoc Viet says: "We will soon produce a series of cultural and educational programmes offering latest information and reports and live shows."

VCTV sent some of its young producers and technicians to Singapore and Korea to improve their skills, he says.

The cable TV market, with 2 million subscribers, has been doubling every year for the last several years but the competition remains fierce, he adds. — VNS

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Inane cable TV leaves HCMC viewers frustrated

A man is watching a show on cable television when commercial interrupts

Ho Chi Minh City residents do not have much choice when it comes to cable television, having to choose between SCTV and HTVC. And then, it is a case of six of one and half a dozen of another in terms of programming quality and viewer-friendliness.

In the last year Saigon Tourist and Vietnam Television (VTV), who own SCTV, have increased monthly subscription three times, doubling it to VND88,000(US$4.4) last month.

They explained that the money is required for upgrading equipment, buying new programs, and producing new shows.

One of the channels they claimed to have improved is SCTV1, a comedy channel. On October 2 a new in-house comedy was scheduled to premiere at 8.30pm. But at the announced time, there were only commercials.

Finally the show began at 8.45pm. It featured a conversation between two drunkards and apparently left most viewers cold. To make things worse, there was a burst of commercials every 20 minutes or so.

Many subscribers complain that SCTV is too focused on films and then only broadcasts old ones.

SCTV9, for instance, is dedicated to Asian movies but shows mostly Chinese movies from the nineties. SCTV is meant for movies from all over the world and SCTV16 for western films.

SCTV7 is meant for theater but also shows films, as do “general programming” channels like SCTV6 and SCTV12.

Another complaint is that most shows broadcast on SCTV are repeats of what have been shown on national channels like VTV and HCMC TV (HTV). Movies shown on the general film channel are repeated on other channels the same day.

SCTV promised to start showing Vietnamese films at prime time in September but has yet to do so.

From having just one channel that broadcast Vietnamese and foreign films along with many foreign channels, the cable company has expanded and now has 17 SCTV channels which also show music, sports, skits, and cartoon.

In the last few years many foreign channels like MTV, Travel and Living, and Super Sports have gone and been replaced by SCTV’s own channels.

In the same boat with HTVC

Many people decided to stop subscribing to SCTV after its serial fee hike.

Sensing an opportunity, HTVC launched a promotion to wean away customers from its rival – customers who had paid SCTV but wanted to switch to HTVC did not have to pay the installation charge.

But soon many became disillusioned after realizing that they were hardly getting anything better.

Commercials and TV shopping get as much screen time as programs, with commercials also permanently running in the form of a ticker at the bottom.

Old movies, game shows, and music shows broadcast on HTV’s terrestrial channels get another airing on its cable channels. HTVC+, a news and information channel, only shows commercial and TV shopping, sometimes for as long as an hour.

Huy Van of Tan Phu District said: “I stopped watching SCTV since there are not many sports programs, especially soccer, though the fee kept increasing. I thought HTVC would be different and switched. But now I realized that they are just the same.”

“The quality of HTVC’s cable programs is going down," Nhat Thien of District 7, who has been subscribing to HTVC for three years, said. "The signal is often lost and not fixed for up to a day."

"The sports channels are boring with just a few live broadcasts of soccer or volleyball. The rest of the time, sports channels only play music.”

VietNam Life Style