A survey found the overall competitiveness of South Korea's major media services is lower than that of global platforms. It urged narrowing gaps in financial strength and content investment and integrating fragmented domestic platforms.

The Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI) on Thursday published a report titled "A study on analysing the competitiveness of domestic media services and strategies to strengthen them in response to the spread of global media platforms".

The report assessed the competitiveness of domestic media services and identified pressing tasks as the all-round expansion of global media services such as Netflix and YouTube gathers pace.

"Korean OTTs lag Netflix... need to expand original content"

In a survey of 32 experts in broadcasting and media, 93.8 percent of respondents agreed domestic media services are in a crisis due to competition with global platforms.

With the competitiveness of paid overseas online video services (OTT) converted to a score of 100, domestic paid OTT services were rated at 69.5, paid broadcast services at 59.9, terrestrial channels at 57.7 and paid broadcast channels at 53.5.

Experts cited the weaker financial strength of domestic operators and the limitations of the domestic market as the most serious threats. The report said widening gaps in content investment and in technology and data capabilities with global platforms make it difficult to supply high-quality content on an ongoing basis. It also pointed to reverse discrimination in regulation, a shrinking advertising market and limits to revenue models due to saturation of the subscription market as major risk factors.

A survey of 2,000 paid OTT users also found domestic OTT competitiveness was perceived at 57 to 73 percent of Netflix. By service, Tving was highest at 73.2, followed by Coupang Play at 71.4, Disney Plus at 67.6, Wavve at 63.4 and Watcha at 57.1.

The top task domestic OTTs should address was "expanding the quality and quantity of original content", cited by 33.2 percent. That was followed by "integrated provision of dispersed content" at 19.9 percent and "setting reasonable pricing" at 16.1 percent. Some 53.8 percent of users said the overall content quality of paid overseas OTTs was better than that of domestic OTTs.

In a survey of 1,000 legacy media users, with paid OTT set at 100, the competitiveness of paid broadcast services was 69.0 and direct reception of terrestrial broadcasting was 58.5. Free online video services were 83.7, indicating the competitiveness of paid broadcasting and terrestrial services was even lower than that of free video services such as YouTube.

Some 53.8 percent said the amount of time they spent watching real-time broadcast channels had fallen over the past five years. The most common reason was "more things to watch such as YouTube and Netflix" at 38.1 percent. It was followed by "no programmes worth watching" at 31.2 percent and "hard to watch at the time I want" at 25.3 percent. In news and current affairs, sports and educational programming, satisfaction with real-time broadcast channels was the highest.

Integrate fragmented platforms and expand investment... call for fair-competition system

The report suggested securing original intellectual property (IP), scaling up and integrating platforms, and expanding overseas market entry and global partnerships as private-sector response strategies. It also proposed improving legacy media regulations and expanding tax credits for content production and policy financing, and creating a fair-competition environment with global operators under the principle of "same service, same regulation" as roles for the government.

The researchers said policies are also needed to prevent global platforms from transferring their dominance into adjacent markets such as music and social media through bundled sales.

Jun-seok Kang (강준석), a KISDI research fellow, said that for the domestic media industry to regain competitiveness and secure a sustainable growth path, a comprehensive regulatory and promotion strategy is needed that covers industrial promotion and user protection, along with service innovation by media operators.