ABS CBN Middle East, the Filipino cable television services provider, will move its TFC Direct channel offerings to a new satellite.
The migration is set to bring more overseas Filipinos closer to their home, offer better viewing quality, and lower operational costs for the companies.
"There won't be any change in footprint, but our migration to one satellite from several at present, to give feeds for Asia and Europe, will effectively yield annual savings of around Dh1.8 million ($0.5 million)," said Raffy Jison, managing director of ABS CBN Middle East.
In the first quarter this year, ABS CBN Middle East had reported a 23 per cent increase in net sales and services to 2.1 billion pesos ($37.5 million) due to expansion worldwide.
Jison explained ABS CBN will move to the Atlantic Bird 3 satellite, giving it a footprint covering Europe, the Middle East and some parts of East Africa.
The company used to get its feed from Lockheed Martin 1 (LM1), which mainly covers the whole of Asia and the Middle East.
The gradual signal migration was started in mid-July. This was made aware to subscribers via an ongoing notice of disruption through daily programming.
Jison said the company started operating in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, in December 1997 with an estimated 31,000 subscriber base. "Today we have almost half a million viewers in the Middle East alone."
He noted the migration was a win-win situation all around, with only one minor regional fallout being that viewers in Oman and southwest Saudi Arabia would need bigger dishes.
The migration would reduce operational costs by about 45 per cent, particularly in the transponder cost, without compromising quality. "The savings can in turn be ploughed back to improve content programming," he added.
Jison reiterated ABS CBN's commitment to provide services to the Filipino people. He added that eventually they hope to give the decoders and dish free to subscribers.
"But since the hardware cost is still expensive, we can only opt to lower the subscription fees, and come up with schemes that would be affordable for the subscribers."
He also hoped the company could put a stop to the illegal cable tapping of TFC Direct in the near future.
TFC Direct has four television channels and two radio stations. It has approximately 225,000 subscribers worldwide with a viewership of close to two million.
By next year the company plans to add two more channels to its bouquet, namely a children's and a music television channel.
ABS-CBN is considered the largest media broadcasting in the Philippines, reaching more than 97 per cent of the country's television owning households.
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