What is Kapang?
Kapang has developed into a fully-fledged Live Streaming TV platform, Connected TV, a cable tv service available on all video devices using public IP, delivering more than 20m hours per month across 600 channel services to viewers in the UK and USA.
Kapang is now fully powered by our internally developed private content distribution network (CDN), BroadcastCDN, to provide broadcast-grade encoding, delivery & monetization from an origin SRT/RIST live feed sent from any existing playout system, broadcaster or MCR.
Does the FAST Industry have problems?
Kapang has witnessed the FAST industry evolve over the last 5 years with a sharp growth in audiences during the Covid lockdown period, unfortunately witnessing technology companies take advantage of content owners within the FAST gold rush.
Tech start-ups looking to disrupt the broadcast industry with cloud-based, low-effort, low-skill, fast-start services producing uninspiring linear feeds that lack structure and fail to provide a comparable television user experience (UX) for viewers and advertisers whilst retaining an unsustainable high revenue share of predictably poor earnings.
Television has always been an expensive medium to create, but when people state that they have a TV channel the audience and advertisers have a clear expectation that it should look the same as it always has.
Kapang recently published its FAST2.0 standard to provide viewer confidence via a minimum channel UX specification. FAST2.0 ensures the viewer channel experience mimics traditional channel formats filtering uninspiring simulated-live VoD-scheduled services that fail to provide a trusted broadcast experience which in inevitably provides low audiences and remanent revenues.
The main problem with FAST is that channels are not able to comply with the two key stakeholders, the viewers, and the advertisers, who want FAST & CTV channels to have the same experience (UX) & TV format, but channels are being governed by cloud technology services that cannot provide traditional channel UX, functionality, success, or sustainability.
We have proven that a true TV experience provides an uplift of >1000%, simulcasting existing cable and satellite television channels or formatted channels such as Fuel TV, Unbeaten and Dread are all showing higher audience market share.
What do FAST Channels need to be earning?
A typical niche FAST channel should be returning the same as any traditional broadcaster, $1.5-$2m/annum, which can be easily achieved with an average of 20,000 people, a tiny fraction of UK & US households, watching for 32 minutes per day.
Larger broad audience channels, entertainment, and news outlets should be exceeding 100,000 people per day and have an average viewing time of 54 minutes to provide $5-10m/annum.
If all FAST workflow stakeholders took a fair share and the channel complied with traditional television formats, then 10% of the US population engaging in CTV FAST services would see annual revenues exceed $20 billion providing a sustainable business model for more than 500 FAST & CTV channels.
The reasons behind these audience figures not being demonstrated now are directly related to the platform interface, the quality of ad inventory, the content quality, the user experiences, and the structure of the channels not being in the format to most television viewers.
All workflow participants must understand that content & curation is the most expensive part of the end-to-end process and must earn at least half of gross revenues. Many traditional major broadcasters could not afford to entertain anything less than 70% of gross earnings, as they do now, otherwise, they could not continue to commission and produce the content grade expected by audiences and the platforms earn more as the channels are watched more.
“Content is still king,” said Jamie Branson, “The reason people visit a channel or a platform revolves around the content and to get new, innovative, and popular content into FAST the content producers must see a financial advantage from the channel owners which means that channel owners need to be earning more per eyeball.
Can Kapang aid the future of broadcast FAST Channels & CTV Channels?
Kapang has spent a lot of time in business modelling channels since it started out as a content and channel owner 7 years ago. Kapang’s success is dedicated to aligning viewers, advertisers, and channels/content owners by providing a balanced business model and an entertaining service which is accepted by viewers and advertisers as a credible replacement compared to traditional TV platforms.
Kapang has announced that it will be taking 20% revenue share with all channels to align and attract traditional broadcasters looking for transformation into FAST and to provide our audiences with a much wider choice of channels.
Kapang has announced that it is raising $50m backed by several large broadcast businesses to deliver a true FAST2.0 compliant platform. Kapang provides the audience with a cable-tv solution available everywhere, supported by a sustainable and investable broadcast business model for channels and content owners whilst providing a great experience for viewers and advertisers.
Kapang is looking to invest in channels, mentor channels and fund new content creation and channel yield using its centralised fund as well as growing its in-house ad-sales and channel sponsorship team.
Kapang releases its distribution & playout services
To reduce the risk and costs on channels, Kapang has announced the public release of its delivery & distribution solution BroadcastCDN & its in-house playout service Cloudie, the mentored FAST2.0 playout solution, both services offering channels an opportunity to use the secret sauce of Kapang across all platforms with an affordable & predictable cost.
BroadcastCDN consists of video encoding, CDN, SSAI, ad server, monitoring, and distribution for a fixed CDN fee enabling any existing linear channels to reduce the number of integrated suppliers to one. Broadcast CDN accepts SRT, RIST or MPEGTS for the source feed from most on-premise or cloud playout providers.
Broadcast CDN is halving channel costs by eliminating the requirements for managing integration, ZIXI distribution, cloud SSAI services and expensive CDN suppliers, reducing business risk, increasing ad revenues and distributing every channel to an unlimited number of global platforms without platform distribution fees.
Cloudie Playout integrates with broadcast CDN to offer start-up channels and FAST2.0 transformation from underperforming VoD scheduling playout services that fail to resemble traditional TV with an integrated self-service mentored playout & distribution service which can be broadcast within a few days.
Cloudie playout provides fast broadcast scheduling requiring 1 day per week for broadcast-grade scheduling, unique channel sponsorship tools, automated SCTE insertions and the ability to schedule a full week of TV in less than 4 hours. Cloudie Playout costs from as little as $1,170/month with the Kapang subsidized solution for a fully integrated service.
BroadcastCDN & Cloudie Playout channel receive 80% of revenues generated on Kapang (UK & USA) and has fully integrated delivery costs from $0.05/hour watched whilst providing a $0.50/hour earning potential with no fixed fees to distribute to other global platforms.
What do you do next?
Existing & new broadcasters should contact jamie.branson@viewtvgroup.com with their channel names and they can purchase the BroadcastCDN & Cloudie Playout via the Kapang Store pages on Kapang.com.