The strategic approach towards broadcasting in the mobile world

Thae-rae Kim, a news editor at Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) in South Korea, has written his research proposal on how broadcasters in Korea can and should adapt to changing market conditions. His paper is called ‘The strategic approach towards broadcasting in the mobile world’. 

Here’s how Thae-rae summarises his research: "Broadcasters are facing a grave threat as content users migrate from conventional TV platforms to the internet and beyond to mobile services, accessed via the user’s smartphone. It is in such a context that Korea’s Big 3 broadcasters, MBC, KBS, and SBS, launched an OTT (‘Over the Top’) service called Pooq in 2012, aiming for the mobile broadcasting market. Initially, Pooq was to provide the terrestrial TV content of its owners to telecom providers but later terminated its service due to disagreements in pricing. This, in effect, granted Pooq a monopoly over terrestrial TV. However, the news is currently missing from Pooq. Based on survey data, it is clear that users would make use of news provision on Pooq. So adding the news to Pooq would increase its number of users, thereby transmitting the news content created by terrestrial broadcast firms to viewers more efficiently through smart devices. The news categories that could be included in Pooq could comprise the respective news buttons of MBC, KBS and SBS, and several other examples of their content. If it is not possible to provide the news through Pooq due to fierce competition and sharp divergences of interest, each broadcast firm should consider launching its own independent OTT service, like the BBC’s iPlayer."

As with all Fellows’ research papers, any opinions expressed are those of the author and not of the Institute.