Taipei Times (TT): Why did Fox Networks choose Taiwan as its third market to launch the Fox+ service?
Rubin Gandevia: We launched Fox+ in the Philippines and Singapore first. Taiwan is one of our most successful markets in Asia. We have millions of fans across many genres. Our fans are very powerful. They know National Geographic, Star, Movies and Fox Sports. They know everything. We have a good partnership here, so we feel it is a good place to launch. And Taiwanese have taken to online streaming quite well.
TT: How many subscribers does the new service have?
Photo: Lisa Wang, Taipei Times.
Gandevia: We do not share global numbers, but I can tell you that since we launched the service a few weeks ago in the Philippines and Singapore, we have had millions of downloads, and on app stores it ranks among the highest.
TT: Fox chose Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) to distribute the service exclusively. Will it make the service available for other local telecoms or cable operators?
Gandevia: Yes, but we are still negotiating and finalizing details. We would like to reach out to every consumer and platform in Taiwan within a year.
Our partners in Taiwan are very good and we want more. We are not a new player in this market. If we do not want to be disrupted, we have to be active in [building] an ecosystem.
[Chunghwa Telecom told the Taipei Times it has exclusive rights to distribute the Fox+ service for six months.]
TT: What is your pricing strategy?
Gandevia: We prefer to give franchises pricing control because most of those customers already have access to our channels, so we want to offer those people discounts.
TT: What is your take on competition in the Taiwanese market since Netflix and iQiyi Science & Technology Co (愛奇藝), China’s largest video-on-demand (OTT) provider, entered the market more than a year ago?
Gandevia: There is always competition. There is competition in the linear TV [cable TV] space too. Fox does not evade it. This is no different than the existing competition. There is less competition in virtual space because in linear TV there are dozens of channels. In virtual space there are just a few apps. We are very confident and optimistic [about the new service]. This is just another distribution mechanism to reach the consumers.
TT: Netflix is making its first Taiwanese film, Bardo (擺渡身), in partnership with a Taiwanese director, after its first Taiwanese TV series, The Teenage Psychic (通靈少女), which thrilled local audiences. Does Fox have any plans to produce local content?
Gandevia: We do hundreds of local shows already. We have been doing that for decades. A new player who wants to do the same thing can only do it at a much slower rate. We are an established player in localization. We have made hundreds of Taiwanese products. We also make high-quality TV shows from Hong Kong, China and Singapore. We want to do more local content.
We want to bring Hollywood quality to Chinese products.
We just launched a TV show, Trading Floor. The producer, Andy Lau (劉德華), is from Hong Kong.
The story is about a stock broker who has a lot of sex and takes a lot of drugs. The show has big stars and a big producer. It is very high-quality, almost equal to movie quality.
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