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Who Do You Think You Are?

Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu

Yay! MDA have effectively banned exclusivity in the pay television market. I can now watch whatever I want on whichever operator I choose.

Not really.

Why? SingTel cannot sign any contract with the content owner that forbid StarHub from showing the same content.

I own the content. I have the leverage. I decide how I want my content to be shown.

But it's the law, man. You want to do business here, you have to obey our laws.

Fine. I'll structured my licensing fees such that the first operator, if it so chooses to pay a larger fee, will get -- let's just call it first-comer-privilege -- a promise from me that the licensing fee for subsequent operators will be so expensive that no second operator will be able to pay and carry my content.

Oooh ooh ooh, loophole. MDA can simply 'fine-tune' the law that forbids content owner from charging different prices and different terms to different pay TV operators.

You do realize that this will effectively wipe out any new entrants and small players in the pay-TV market, right?

So be it. You can't dictate the terms, you powerful content-owner, if you want to do business here in Singapore.

Fine. I'll just treat the entire Singapore's pay television market as one operator since it doesn't matter who I talk to anymore, and I'll just raise my prices to take account into that. I'll treat all pricing negotiation effectively as though you are licensing my content exclusively.

You can't do that! We'll just not pay for your content. You'll lose our market.

Fine. You are just a tiny red dot with a tiny population. I'll rather have my lawyers spent their negotiation time with the Chinese government.

We'll grow our population by importing foreign talents so that you can't ignore us. 6.5 billion? 10 billion? 20 billion? No problem!

Have you heard of the internet? We'll start selling our content exclusively on the internet. You want to be first country in the world to ban my website? And I'll charge whatever I want, without any middleman in your country to get any part of my revenue.

...

Honestly, from where I am sitting, this whole pay-tv content-sharing policy from MDA looks drafted by a bunch of technocrats with no real-world experience, and no real vision on where the whole market is going. And when SingTel realizes it can't use exclusivity as a loss-leader, consumers will have to continue to pay hefty prices for entertainment from big name content owners.