World

TV companies will need to radically adapt themselves to the fast-evolving world of online entertainment if they hope to survive, experts have warned. 

Broadcasters are already playing catch-up with online gaming giants in the battle for the attention of young audiences and the advertising dollars that follow. 

On the horizon is the so-called “metaverse” — a loose term covering the growing eco-system of interactive online worlds, games and 3D meeting places that are already attracting millions of users. 

While older consumers are still wedded to traditional TV, viewership among under-35s has halved in a decade, according to Statista, and will drop precipitously as the metaverse develops.

“Young people have evolved from passive spectators of TV to active players, and they’ve turned away from screens to smartphones,” said Frederic Cavazza, co-founder of Sysk, a French firm specialising in digital transformation.

“TV channels are going to die with their audiences.”

– ‘Part of the story’ –

To reach young people, broadcasters will have to compete with gaming platforms like Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft — seen as precursors to the metaverse — that are already establishing a dominant position. 

Half of all 9-12-year-olds in the US use Roblox at least once a week, according to media research firm Dubit — doing everything from playing games to watching concerts to just hanging out with friends.

The audiences can be enormous: 33 million people watched rapper Lil Nas X perform on Roblox in 2020 — more than three times the number that watched him on TV at the Grammys this week. 

Broadcasters must choose whether they are sticking with a shrinking market for traditional TV programming, or start bringing their characters and brands into metaverse platforms, said Matthew Warneford, co-founder of Dubit.

“It means bringing people into a world, making them part of the story, playing alongside their friends — the same way that Disneyland allows you and your friends to be in their world with Mickey Mouse,” he said.

– ‘Stay relevant’ –

TV companies have time to adapt, but they face a major challenge in catering at once to older people watching traditional broadcasts, middle-aged people shifting to streaming and young people wanting interactive and social entertainment. 

“If we want to stay relevant, we will have to position ourselves across all these usages,” said Kati Bremme, head of innovation for France Televisions.

The national broadcaster is still in research mode, she said, toying with augmented and virtual reality to build immersive cultural and sporting experiences. 

The biggest challenge, however, may be financial. 

Up to now, TV firms have been insulated from tech disruption because their advertising revenue was largely unaffected — unlike other traditional media like newspapers.

That could change “faster than people realise,” said Warneford.

It was previously hard to move TV ads into the gaming world because they were created by individual companies “who locked them down and captured all the value,” he said. 

But with the more open field of the metaverse, brands will have much more scope to promote themselves and sell goods directly to users. 

Indeed, fashion and luxury labels are already making millions selling virtual clothes and accessories on Roblox, Fortnite and other platforms. 

“If they want to reach young people, do companies keep going to TV or do they go to where young people actually are — in gaming and the metaverse?” 

Electric car lovers are flocking to Austin for an enormous party Thursday celebrating a new Tesla “gigafactory” in Texas the size of 100 professional soccer fields.

Online buzz has swelled ever since Tesla’s colorful but controversial founder and chief executive Elon Musk tweeted word of the event, with reports of perhaps as many as 15,000 guests taking part in the official plant opening.

Tesla owners posted plans for cross country road trips, while others urged the uninvited to just show up and find a way inside.

The company has remained mum about details of the extravaganza, but rumors abound, including reports of an open bar and concert at Tesla’s 74-acre home in Texas.

Tesla fans have posted drone footage and other video showing sightings of what could be new vehicle models on display at the event.

“I got a golden ticket!” Luke Metger, president of a Texas environmental organization, tweeted on the eve of the party, attaching a screen-shot of his invite to the Cyber Rodeo – Giga Texas gala.

But will Texas be Musk’s land of promise?

– Farewell Silicon Valley –

The move to a US state known for conservative Republican politics is seen by some as Musk stepping away from the liberal Silicon Valley culture in which he made his fortune.

The South African serial entrepreneur is now ranked the world’s richest man. He founded Tesla in Silicon Valley in 2003, but shifted its headquarters to Texas late last year.

Musk has clashed with California regulators, particularly when health precautions mandated at the height of the pandemic closed Tesla’s Fremont plant.

California is also investigating whether discrimination took place at Tesla’s plant there.

It remains to be seen how Musk will navigate conservative policies in Texas, such as the state’s restrictive new abortion law and limits on seeking health services for transgender children.

Part of the Texas allure is a lack of corporate or personal income taxes. Tesla received more than $60 million in tax breaks to build the factory, which is expected to employ 10,000 people over time.

While Musk has spoken of a desire for a shift away from climate-wrecking fossil fuels, Texas is known for oil rigs and gas-guzzling cars and trucks.

“I think he is having a bit of an identity crisis and forgotten who his customer is, and it is going to come back to bite him,” tech analyst Rob Enderle said of Musk.

“He is drifting to the right; what he doesn’t seem to remember is that most of the people who buy electric cars are the liberals.”

– Cybertruck –

Giga Texas has been in operation since late last year. It is the fifth and largest gigafactory cranking out battery packs and vehicles for Tesla.

Since starting with a car plant in Silicon Valley, Tesla has gone global with mega-factories in Berlin and Shanghai as well as in US states New York and Nevada.

The Austin plant will produce Model 3 and Y cars and eventually a Cybertruck pickup and a semi for hauling cargo trailers set to go into production next year, according to Edmunds analyst Jessica Caldwell.

Tesla demand is outstripping supply to the point that some Model Y and 3 cars are being delivered months late in some parts of the world, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

“The solution is mainly in Austin and Berlin,” Ives said.

Gigafactory Berlin officially opened last month.

Tesla wants to ramp up production by some 50 percent annually, and should easily top that goal this year, Musk said recently.

He has delivered more than a million vehicles during the past 12 months despite production constraints caused by a global chip shortage plaguing many industries.

Hit by regular power cuts and with popular sites like Twitter and TikTok blocked, the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan hardly seems a likely candidate for a tech boom.

But with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine driving an exodus of IT specialists to former parts of the Soviet Union, authorities in Uzbekistan are hoping to speed up plans to modernise an economy best known for its vast production of cotton.

It took only one day after Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine for Uzbekistan to launch a one-stop government relocation programme for IT specialists and companies. 

Offering visas, housing and child care support to individuals, and registration assistance and tax exemptions to companies, the programme has already attracted some 2,000 foreign IT specialists, the government said.

People like Anastasia Markova, a Russian citizen who recently became a public relations manager at Uzbekistan’s state-run IT Park in the capital Tashkent.

Markova, 22, had been due to be married in Russia in April, but left Moscow with her fiance — an employee of a company registered at the park — for Tashkent and the two are now seeking permanent residence.

Markova said she feels comfortable in the city, where Russian is still widely spoken three decades after Uzbekistan gained independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“The country accepted us as one of their own. The people are so friendly and hospitable,” she said.  

– Thousands in IT leave Russia –

Markova was more keen to speak about her new home than the country she left behind, saying only that her decision to leave Russia had been “rushed, as it was for many people” and due to “a number of social and economic factors”.

Several other Russian citizens contacted by AFP after moving to Uzbekistan and neighbouring Kyrgyzstan refused to talk, saying they feared the consequences of potentially being seen as critical of Russia. 

The IT Park in Tashkent is home to some 550 companies and at the heart of plans to increase Uzbek IT exports to more $1 billion by 2028, a 25-fold rise from last year’s figure.

The park’s motto, “START local and GO Global” is emblazoned on a wood panel facade at the entrance. Inside, young support staff in casual attire and headsets work at desks. 

The IT Park is already seeing benefits from the relocation programme dubbed TashRush — “a name that seemed most suited to the phenomenon we are witnessing,” the park’s deputy director Bakhodir Ayupov said.

The Russian Association of Electronic Communications, a lobby group, said on March 22 that 50,000 to 70,000 specialists had left Russia and up to 100,000 more may follow them out of the door this month. 

For the moment, Uzbekistan is a less popular destination for departing Russian IT workers than Georgia, Turkey or Armenia.

Uzbekistan has lagged behind other ex-Soviet nations in developing the sector. The country has of late battled winter energy shortages, while power cuts are not uncommon, even in Tashkent.

– ‘Flywheel of repression’ 

But internet speed has “improved greatly” in Uzbekistan, driving a doubling of IT exports last year in comparison with 2020, Ayupov said.

In an apparent nod to business, Uzbek authorities last month lifted a long-term block on the Skype communications platform. 

Microblogging service Twitter, video-sharing platform TikTok and Russia’s most popular social network VKontakte remain blocked in the authoritarian republic of around 35 million people.

Despite these difficulties, some of the Russians who left said they would rather stick it out in Uzbekistan than return home.

Olga, a 42-year-old who moved to the historic Uzbek city of Samarkand with her husband immediately after the invasion, said she had fallen in love with the former Silk Road citadel and hoped her experience as a content curator for digital museums would help her find work.

“To begin with we thought we would be here for a few days, but we decided to stay longer. People who were complete strangers have been so good to us,” said Olga, who asked that she not be fully identified. 

She has no plans to return to Russia, where “the flywheel of repression is spinning and may be spinning for a long time to come,” she said. 

Samsung Electronics expects operating profits for the first quarter to rise 50.3 percent, the South Korean tech giant said in a statement Thursday, despite global supply chain woes.

The world’s biggest smartphone maker forecast 2022 first-quarter operating profits of about 14.1 trillion won ($11.6 billion), up from 9.4 trillion won in the same quarter last year.

Samsung did not provide details on the performance of its various divisions. The company is expected to release its full results on April 28.

Analysts said the forecast was likely driven by strong smartphone sales, but warned of an expected drop in profits in the memory chip division.

“Price decline in memory chips will be contained on the back of stronger than expected demand,” Kim Un-ho, an analyst at IBK Investment & Securities, said in a report.

Profits in Samsung’s mobile business are expected to soar by 55.8 percent compared with Q4 to over 4.1 trillion won, offsetting an anticipated six percent decline in profits from its memory chips division, the report said.

With memory chips now used in a wide-ranging array of devices and cloud servers — essential for remote working in the pandemic era — the sector has become less dependent on seasonally-driven demand for gadgets such as smartphones and laptops. 

Last year saw a surge in chip prices amid strong demand for those used in personal devices and data centres, helping Samsung hit record annual sales.

Going forward, Kim forecast the conglomerate would make 60.5 trillion won in operating profits for 2022 overall, a 17 percent increase on-year.

– Smartphone app –

But Samsung’s smartphones division was in hot water in its native South Korea recently over a pre-installed app called Game Optimizations Service on the latest Galaxy S phone lineup. 

Designed to fine-tune system performances, consumers claim it actually throttled the speed of thousands of non-gaming apps.

The issue forced Samsung’s vice chairman, Han Jong-hee, to apologise at a shareholders’ meeting last month, and prompted a class action by nearly 2,000 consumers seeking 300,000 won in compensation each.

But sales of its latest Galaxy S22 series are likely to exceed one million units in South Korea on Friday in the first six weeks of release, selling at a 20 percent faster pace than the previous S21 edition.

“It is a significant feat considering global supply chain woes,” Samsung said in a press release Wednesday.

While the coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on the world economy, it has helped many tech companies boom.

The shift to working from home during the pandemic has boosted demand for devices powered by Samsung’s chips as well as home appliances such as televisions and washing machines.

The world’s biggest memory chip maker, Samsung Electronics has aggressively stepped up investment in its semiconductor business as the world battles chip shortages that have hit everything from cars and home appliances to smartphones and gaming consoles.

In November, it announced a new microchip factory in Texas, a $17 billion investment. The plant is expected to be operational by the end of 2024.

The firm is also investing in the development of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and 5G/6G communications.

Samsung Electronics is the flagship subsidiary of the giant Samsung group, by far the largest of the family-controlled empires known as chaebols that dominate business in South Korea.

The conglomerate’s overall turnover is equivalent to about one-fifth of South Korea’s gross domestic product.

Asian equity markets fell Thursday after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest policy meeting indicated it is preparing to aggressively wind back its monetary policy, while oil prices bounced back from another big drop.

The eagerly awaited summary dealt another blow to traders, who have grown increasingly concerned that officials will not be able to rein in 40-year-high inflation while also preventing the world’s top economy from tipping into recession.

According to the minutes, several policymakers were in favour of lifting interest rates half a percentage point while they also talked about offloading their bond holdings at a rate of $95 million per month — a process known as quantitative tightening.

The Fed’s balance sheet runs to about $9 trillion. 

News that such measures were being considered comes after several members of the policy board made hawkish comments about lifting rates. The next meeting takes place May 3-4.

The prospect of borrowing costs rising at a quicker pace and to a higher level over the coming months has added to a wave of uncertainty across trading floors caused by the war in Ukraine.

And while data at the moment points to a healthy economy, commentators warn of possible hard times ahead.

“This job of orchestrating a soft landing (for the economy) is going to be difficult,” Tracie McMillion, at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, told Bloomberg Television.

“We’ve only seen quantitative tightening once before and it was to a lesser degree than it will be this time, and it ended shortly after it started.”

Wall Street tumbled for the second day in a row, with the Nasdaq again losing more than two percent, as tech firms are more susceptible to higher rates.

And Asia broadly followed suit, with Tokyo, Sydney, Seoul, Taipei, Singapore, Wellington and Manila all down.

Hong Kong and Shanghai fluctuated on hopes that China will move to ease monetary policy as its giant economy struggles under the weight of lockdowns in various parts of the country.

Authorities will step in to use tools at an “appropriate time”, according to the readout of a State Council meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, adding they would also look at other ways to increase consumption. 

On oil markets, both main contracts enjoyed healthy gains a day after tanking more than five percent on concerns about demand caused by a possible economic slowdown.

The commodity had also been hit by an announcement from the International Energy Agency that it will release tens of millions of barrels to offset those lost through sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

And Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said: “China’s Omicron outbreak is spreading much faster than previous virus strains, and authorities, not ready to switch to a different strategy, are still trying to contain outbreaks by implementing strict controls.

“In light of that, oil traders continue to downgrade their mainland demand forecasts.”

– Key figures around 0230 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 2.0 percent at 26,803.34 (break)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.1 percent at 22,065.84

Shanghai – Composite: DOWN 0.3 percent at 3,272.12

Brent North Sea crude: UP 1.9 percent at $102.94 per barrel

West Texas Intermediate: UP 1.8percent at $97.94 per barrel

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0910 from $1.0900 late Wednesday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3081 from $1.3071

Euro/pound: UP at 83.41 pence from 83.38 pence

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 123.63 yen from 123.79 yen

New York – Dow: DOWN 0.4 percent at 34,496.51 (close)

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.3 percent at 7,587.70 (close)

Almost buried by the attention surrounding The Slap at the Oscars was a historic first: a streaming film won best picture, taking Hollywood’s top prize from the legacy studios that have long dominated the town.

If Will Smith had not mounted the stage and hit Chris Rock, the best picture win for Apple TV+ crowd-pleaser “CODA” would have been the talk of Tinseltown ever since the Academy Awards.

“There was clearly going to be a streaming service break through that barrier. And I think it’s an important break,” said Kendall Phillips, a Syracuse University professor who specializes in pop culture.

“I do think it’s going to open up a much wider body of films to be taken more seriously by Academy voters.”

For months before the ceremony at the Dolby Theatre, streaming’s coming of age had appeared likely to be the main storyline from the 2022 Oscars.

The smart money for best picture was initially on arty Western “The Power of the Dog,” Jane Campion’s brooding meditation on toxic masculinity.

The film, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a sexually repressed cowboy, was a Netflix title that the streamer — the biggest player on the small screen — had spent heavily to promote as it chased Hollywood’s ultimate stamp of approval.

But a late surge from “CODA” as audiences warmed to its charming cast of loveable characters — and its hopeful message of a deaf family overcoming  adversity — pushed it into the top slot.

– Money –

Streaming services first barged their way into Hollywood’s premier awards in 2017, when Amazon’s “Manchester by the Sea” bagged a best picture nomination.

It lost out to “Moonlight,” at the ceremony when “La La Land” was briefly and incorrectly announced as the year’s winner.

Netflix now has a growing stable of best picture nominations — including “Roma,” “The Irishman,” “Marriage Story,” “Mank,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” and “Don’t Look Up.” 

For the past three years, Netflix has snagged the most Oscar nominations of any distributor. This year alone it had 27, though only won one — best director for Campion.

Apple TV+, by contrast, received its first-ever Oscar nomination last year, and this year managed three wins from six nods.

Trade title Variety reported Apple had lavished more than $10 million on its Oscars campaign — about as much as it cost to make “CODA.”

Netflix spent heavily on its bid for Oscar glory — Los Angeles was awash for months with advertisements puffing its prize bull.

For some in the industry, all that money being thrown around was a little difficult to swallow.

“Everywhere you drive in LA you are faced with a billboard saying it’s ‘The Best Film of the Year,'” one anonymous director told Indiewire.

“If anyone is to blame for pushback it’s Netflix themselves for pushing really hard on the movie.”

– Modern-day Medicis –

There was off-the-record griping from some Academy members who felt they were unable to vote for a streaming movie because of a general distaste for the upstart format.

For a start, there’s a nostalgia for the medium.

Many moviemakers bemoan the solitary experience of watching on a small screen at home, and talk warmly of the joy of being in a dark cinema with scores of other movie lovers.

Kevin Costner emerged at the Oscars to award best director with an elegy to the artform (and some of the most eloquent speechifying of the night).

“Once I too was a boy, in that magic castle of story and narrative, my seat there in the flickering dark of imagination… projected phantoms painting portraits of poets past,” he waxed.

But, says Phillips of Syracuse University, audiences ultimately care about the content — and streamers are up to the task.

“It’s increasingly difficult to determine where [a film is] coming from, whether it’s a streaming service production, or big studio production. Those lines have probably blurred forever,” he said.

Audiences who went to see “CODA” during its limited run in movie theaters didn’t care who made it, he said.

“That boundary, where one side is the motion picture theater experience, and the other side is the at-home streaming experience, I think that boundary is probably never going to be reestablished, at least the way it was, for many decades.”

Increasingly, filmmakers themselves are less bothered about the distinction.

“Netflix is not what I would have wanted historically, but they’re a little like the Medicis of our time,” Campion told the Los Angeles Times last year, referring to the moneyed patrons that funded many of the best-known pieces of Renaissance art.

“The people at the top do love cinema; they want to see good things. When you’ve got a lot of money, beauty counts.”