Media

The Company

Started in 1989, Workpoint is a TV broadcasting production house with an expertise in game shows and variety programmes. Many of these have become very successful and one of its famous shows, “Ching Roi Ching Lan”, has been on the air for more than two decades. The key persons behind Workpoint’s success are Phanya Nirunkul and Prapas Cholsaranon, with each holding about 30% of the company’s shares at present.

In September 2011, with its 20 years of experience and a large pool of TV content, the company entered the satellite TV business with its first channel, WorkpointTV. A second satellite channel, Channel 6, started broadcasting in the following year. However, after Workpoint acquired a digital TV licence in the beginning of 2014, it ceased its satellite TV operations and began focusing on a new channel Workpoint1.

Among the 24 new TV channels, Workpoint1 is the most successful, with a February 2016 rating of 0.846 (viewers age 4+, average 24 hours, nationwide), which is ranked number three behind Channel 7 ( rating 2.407) and Channel 3 (rating 2.046) and far ahead of number 4, MONO29 (rating 0.497). Game shows and variety programmes contribute 60% of airtime. In the beginning of 2015 Workpoint shifted all of its programmes from analog TV to Workpoint1 instead.

Development Strategy

Workpoint1 has been doing well but it can do much better given Workpoint’s potential. There are several things the firm is now doing to take the channel’s popularity to another level. Its strong variety and game show content needs to be further strengthened in order to keep up with the intense competition. Moreover, it needs to increase the popularity of its Thai drama series, an area in which it still lags behind competitors.

Currently, there are three programmes that have outstanding ratings, enabling the company to sell advertising time at BT150,000-300,000 ($ 4520-9030) per minute, namely “Mice Thongkam”, “Ching Roi Ching Lan”, and “Pridsana Fah Lab”. “Mice Thongkam” (Thai country music singing contest) and “Ching Roi Ching Lan” are broadcast on weekends and are among the top programmes nationwide. “Pridsana Fah Lab” is a game show aired on weekday evenings. This show was introduced in June 2014 and has been very popular. Workpoint launched a mobile game application similar to the show in April that has since been downloaded more than 7m times. Apart from these three programmes, Workpoint is trying to boost the ratings of other variety programmes so that it can sell advertising time at high ad rates instead of as bundled packages. If it can successfully do so, we should see rising average ad rates in 2016, with the management expecting a rate ofBT50,000 ($1510) per minute compared to BT34,000 ($1020) in 2015.

Thai drama series are the most popular type of TV programme in Thailand in terms of the number of viewers. Workpoint needs to fill its TV schedule with more drama series if it wants to take the next step. From late 2014 to early 2015, it broadcast two Thai drama series (in-house productions) during the weekend primetime. The response was moderate due to its low presence in this type of TV franchise, in our opinion. After six months, Workpoint broadcast its third drama series, which was quite successful, driving the average rating of Workpoint1 up by 13% in October. The firm still has several drama series waiting to go on-air and the success of these series will increase Workpoint’s expertise with respect to the most profitable type of TV programme.

Workpoint has a team of comedy actors that consistently draws viewers. Nevertheless, the company has undertaken a project called Workpoint Star Search to recruit the next generation of human resources. Moreover, with higher channel ratings and rising popularity, Workpoint1 is becoming one of the first choices for famous actors, giving shows the benefit of casts with name recognition to draw viewers.