Like a mother who guides her children toward their first steps, the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore was formed with the main aim of building a foundation of companies, people and projects in Singapore's local media industry. That meant participating in the entire process of a project: idea pitching, funding, production and the project's internationalization. However, after a couple of years of work, the children started walking by themselves and something had to change in the cycle.

"We wanted to make it easier for companies to understand how we could help them. Reducing our existing 46 schemes to just five schemes across all the media sectors we are supporting -namely Animation, Broadcast, Film, Games, Interactive Digital Media, Music and Publishing- was a good way to do so. So rather than say a particular scheme is only for TV or film, our schemes will be able to support content production on more than one platform. This makes sense as technology is multiplying the platforms for media content to be delivered," Aubeck Kam, MDA's CEO, explains.

That's why last September 2011 MDA launched its new "revised grant schemes" which seek to "position the media industry for the future" and take it "to the next level". The production-centric nature of MDA's old funding schemes gave place to co-investments as the main mode of funding, which encouraged companies "to think about IP ownership and go beyond service for hire". "Now that our companies have matured, we want to help them move on to the next stage, to acquire their own IP and even share their IP across various platforms, so as to empower them to maximize the commercialization of their IP and to increase their revenue," Kam says. Therefore, MDA's continues to assist projects and initiatives, but from a different, more intelligent perspective.

SCHEMES REVIEWED
"Reviewing the schemes also enables us to provide a stronger focus on supporting the creation and refinement of ideas -which is critical to raise productivity- and to provide more opportunities for talent across a wide range of skills to be developed. This also includes freelancers in the industry, who constitute a significant portion of the industry," the executive states.

Arguments for this change include some "industry signs" like the perception that Singapore's players are "of a world-class standard" and capable of working with foreign partners to create competitive projects. With this in mind, from now on there will be a strong emphasis on helping researchers and scriptwriters grow, as well as "a sharper focus" on local talent development.

SINGAPORE MEDIA FUSION PLAN
The Singapore Media Fusion Plan (SMFP) is a five-year media development roadmap. Since its launch in 2009, the media industry has achieved S$23.9 billion in revenue; S$6.4 billion in value added and created 66,000 jobs. "We are confident that we are on track to achieving the goal of S$8 billion value-added by 2013, as spelt out in the SMFP, but we certainly need to continue to be aware of the issues facing our industry and find solutions to mitigate these issues. After a series of consultations, industry visits and market trends analyses, we saw a strong need to renew our focus on productivity if we want to propel our current media industry to the next level. This is one of the key objectives of our revised grant schemes," Aubeck Kam affirms.

MIPCOM & ATF
"MIPCOM was bustling with activity as usual, continuing to be an important market to showcase Singapore content and capabilities to the international buyers and sellers. The Singapore contingent had a fruitful time meeting up and networking with potential partners including international media companies and governmental counterparts. Thus far, I understand Singapore companies are already in several negotiations with international counterparts as a result of MIPCOM. Several international co-production deals were also announced at the market. On the other hand, ATF is one of the most important television media content markets in the region. Singapore will be represented at ATF this year by a delegation of over 30 media companies, including national broadcaster MediaCorp and a selection of our TV, animation, film and music companies such as Sparky Animation, Tiny Island Productions, The Group Entertainment, Ochre Pictures, Boku Films and Yellow Box Studios, amongst others."