Mark Francis, a veteran TV and streaming executive in Asia, has joined Indonesia’s Vidio streaming platform as its chief content officer and strategy officer. The appointment comes as the platform repasses 4 million subscribers and reclaims a lead in the Indonesian streaming market.
based in Jakarta and reporting directly to CEO Sutanto Harton, Francis is expected to oversee the freemium streamer’s content strategy and programming. This includes the premium live sports tentpoles’ the Premier League, BRI Liga 1 and many more international and local sports, plus an expanding portfolio of scripted original series.
Francis has two decades of experience as a senior content executive and executive producer for the likes of Discovery, Fox International Channels, National Geographic Channels, now defunct Asian streamer iflix and Astro Malaysia’s streamer sooka, which he helped launch in 2021.
Most recently Francis served as group lead of original productions at Warner Bros. Discovery overseeing HBO Go’s premium scripted and non-scripted originals from markets including Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan.
While at iflix, at a time when OTT was still in its relative infancy in Asia, Francis was involved in launching hyper-local drama series, including the Indonesian hit romance “Magic Hour: The Series” (Screenplay Films) and a first-of-its-kind horror series “Kisah Tanah Jawa: Merapi” (Rapi Films).
Early in 2024, Vidio is expected to announce an expanded slate of originals. It is increasing its output of action-thrillers such as “Pertaruhan The Series” season 2, and multiple returning seasons of Vidio’s most popular young adult franchises and broad appeal comedy series.
“After weakening in Q2 2023, the Indonesian SVOD market has recovered with more sustainable demand thanks to sports, local and Korean content. Sports and local content remains the main engine for Vidio which has led category growth in Q4 2023 and is expected to grow rapidly in 2024 with the overall category expected to add 1.3 – 1.4 million new subscribers in 2024.” said Vivek Couto, CEO of consultancy firm Media Partners Asia.
Media Partners Asia’s Asia Pacific Video & Broadband Industry 2024 report ranked Vidio as the OTT platform with the most subscribers in Indonesia, surpass global and regional OTT platforms including Netflix, Viu and Disney+ Hotstar. It is the only one with paying subscribers in excess of 4 million.
“Vidio is committed to keep allocating the largest investment in developing local content as the backbone of Vidio’s future growth, and this local content becomes the reason for customers to continue coming back visiting Vidio platform. We hope this commitment can help support the growth of the Indonesian content industry, so that one day we can penetrate the international market,” said Hartono.
Indonesia has long been a market with huge potential. According to Media Partners Asia, total paying streaming subscribers at the end of the third quarter was in Indonesia was 21 million – less than 10% of the 270 million population.
