VietNamNet’s Vietnam Economic Forum (VEF) reviews the
media sector in 2010.

Alliance of six cinemas sue Megastar

June 2009: Megastar started implementing the minimum film
leasing price per each viewer (MPC), fixed at VND 25,000 dong (after tax) per
ticket. It means that for each film distributed by Megastar, cinemas have to pay
it VND25,000/ticket in the first weeks. To earn profit, cinemas have to fix
minimal ticket price at VND50,000. This is too high for cinemas which focus on
popular audience who have low and average income.

March 1, 2010: six companies including the Saigon Movies JS
Company (running the Cinebox Hoa Binh cinema in HCM City), Movie 212 JS Company
(Cinebox Ly Chinh Thang in HCM City), Saigon Movie Media JS Company (Dong Da,
Thang Long, Toan Thang, Vinh Quang cinemas in HCM City), Thien Ngan Movie JS
Company (Galaxy cinemas), Hanoi Movie Co, Ltd. (Thang Tam cinema in Hanoi), Dong
Nai Movie Distribution Centre (Thanh Binh and Song Pho cinemas in Dong Nai
province) sent their petition against Megastar to relevant agencies. They
accused Megastar of abusing its market controlling position.

March 17: the conciliation process failed. Six companies
sent their petition to the Ministry of Industry of Trade’s Competition Control
Agency.

May 12: the Competition Control Agency decided to conduct
initial investigation of Megastar.

May 21: Megastar sent a dispatch to the six companies
asking them to meet with Megastar representatives on May 25, at the place and
time fixed by Megastar. The six film companies said that Megastar’s act showed a
patronizing attitude.

June 26: Representatives of Megastar, six companies and
relevant agencies took place at the Vietnam Movie Administration in Hanoi.

June 18: the Competition Control Agency decided to conduct
an official investigation. Two companies – the Hanoi Moive Co., Ltd and Dong Nai
Film Districbution Centre were rejected from the case because they were not
affected by Megastar’s MPC policy. The investigation had been planned to take
six months. It finished on December 18.

According to the Competition Control Agency, the case can
be brought to the Committee for Competition.

In November 2010, Megastar organized a press conference to
explain the case.

At the press conference, Megastar Chair Brian Hall stated
that Megastar didn’t agree with any of the points listed in the petition sent by
four companies to the Agency for Competition Control.

Hall said that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove that Megastar
holds 30 percent of the imported film distribution market, thus they couldn’t
prove that Megastar holds the controlling position.

He also said that Megastar didn’t impose minimum ticket
price and the VND25,000 is only applied for the first 1-2 weeks. If cinemas want
to reduce ticket prices, they can wait for two weeks after new films are
screened to hire them.

On December 21, the Competition Control Agency said that
the investigation results are not available and the agency extended the
investigation deadline by 60 days.

The race between television broadcasters

K +, a joint venture between the Vietnam Television (VTV)
and France’s Canal Plus, held the exclusive right to air some international
football events in Vietnam. To watch some football events in Spain, Italy and
Britain, the audience have to pay VND1.5 million to buy a signal receiver and
pay K+ over VND250,000 per month.

Football fans were very angry. The Vietnam Football Fan
Association collected one millions of signatures and sent a petition to Prime
Minister, asking for his intervention.

Sports fans were once again astonished by the information
that AVG, a private company, bought the copyright to air football events and
other sports events in Vietnam in the next 20 years.

AVG will pay VND6 billion dong ($300,000) annually,
doubling the pay from the national Vietnam Television (VTV) or VTC. In addition,
the pay will rise by 10 percent yearly, plus 20 percent from advertising.

Some VFF officials also said that it is more comfortable to
cooperate with AVG than VTV, which often expressed a “haughty” attitude.

Competition among television broadcasters can bring about
better services but low and average income earners  will be adversely affected.

Fake charity auction

The charity auction for flood victims in central Vietnam
which was said to be the most successful with up to VND73.9 billion dong ($3.3
million) became a scandal after the auction winners turned out to be fakes.

The auction, organized by Gia Gia Gemstone JS Company, took
place at HCM City’s Queen Plaza on November 11. The event was registered in
Vietnamese records as the charity auction that attracted over 90 contestants of
the Miss Earth 2010 pageant and hundreds of businessmen.

The auction was also broadcast on international television
channels like NBC and StarWorld and many local channels.

The set of the four sacred creatures
‘Dragon-Unicorn-Tortoise-Phoenix’ was sold for VND47.9 billion (over $2
million). Its starting price was VND40 billion. The millennial Thang Long-Hanoi
kettledrum fetched VND12 billion for charity. A gemstone picture with signatures
of all 90 Miss Earth candidates was sold at VND3 billion. A giant gemstone was
auctioned for 11 billion dong by a man who called himself Phat, a representative
of the Binh Dien company in Long An province. The organizing board stated it had
collected nearly VND74 billion ($3.7 million) from the auction.

“When we called the winners of the auction for the gemstone
painting and the bronze drum, they didn’t answer the phone. The Binh Dien
company said that there was no man of that name representing the firm at the
auction,” said the chairwoman of the HCM City Red Cross Association Nguyen Thi
Hue city said.

The auction winner for the four sacred creatures, Bao Long
Ceramic Company, didn’t pay for the items because the owner of the four
creatures asked Bao Long company to directly pay the money (VND47.9 billion
dong) to would donate money to flood victims itself, not
Bao Long. Bao Long disagreed and it promised to donate VND1 billion to the HCM
City Red Cross.

A representative of the organizing board, Dinh Gia Dien,
said they were cheated by auctioneers who used false phone numbers to attend the
auction.

“Perhaps they exploited us to advertise their brands or
they treated the auction as a joke. Moreover, the event hosts might be
inexperienced or they were anxious to sell items at high prices so they were
cheated,” Dien explained.

Senior television host makes mistake

Serious translation mistakes made by Lai Van Sam, the host
of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” television show, at the awards ceremony at
the first Vietnam International Film Festival on October 21, became a hot topic
in the country.

Sam hosted the ceremony with Ngo My Uyen, a former model,
actress and now a prestidigitator in the US, who was responsible for English
translation.

He was criticized for making “unintelligible and
unsuitable” comments at the event, which was participated by many foreign
guests.

After announcing the winner for the Best Actress, he asked
the audience to clap their hands on the occasion of the Day of Vietnamese Women,
which falls on October 20. He made unintelligible comments about the co-host My
Uyen and even said that his presence at the ceremony is inappropriate.

Sam was strongly criticized for his wrong translation of
the speech by Hong Kong actor Daniel Wu. Though the organizing board arranged
translators for the ceremony people didn’t know why Sam stepped in to translate
for Daniel Wu. His translation was completely different from what Daniel Wu
actually said.

If one googles “MC Lai Van Sam + dich sai” (senior MC Lai
Van Sam + wrong translation), over 148,000 pages will show up within 0.50
second.

While many people think that this is an unacceptable
mistake of an event-host like Lai Van Sam, others defend him, pointing instead
to My Uyen, who speaks English very well, but stood besides Sam doing nothing.

While Sam has not said a word about the incident, My Uyen
told an online newspaper that Sam tried to “save” the show so he translated for
Daniel Wu, though Sam was in charge of the Vietnamese part only.

“I was very surprised when Sam translated Daniel Wu’s
speech because he was in charge of the Vietnamese part. In that circumstance, I
could not interrupt him, especially at an event with many foreign guests,” Uyen
explained.

According to Uyen, the organizing board arranged French,
English, Korean and Chinese translators for the event. Uyen was in charge of
English and Sam of Vietnamese.

The script of the awards ceremony was censored and approved
by the Vietnam Cinema Agency and the Vietnam Television. Uyen’s English script
was also approved by the Foreign Ministry.

“My role that night was very passive. I had to follow the
approved script. Sam made last corrections to the script which was then sent to
the Foreign Ministry to be translated into English,” Uyen said.

She said that Sam said something that was not in the
approved script, and which was only suitable for Vietnamese audience, not
foreigners. She didn’t translate these words. People might have noticed that she
talked less than Sam.

Uyen also said that she fulfilled the task assigned to her
by the organizers well.

“After the show, Sam told me that he knew his translation
was wrong,” Uyen said and she respected Sam’s decision.

Tran Dang Tuan steps down as VTV Deputy General Director

Tran Dang Tuan, Deputy General Director of the national
television station (VTV) suddenly submitted his rezignation to the Prime
Minister. In early November, the Prime Minister accepted the rezignation and
Tuan became a sub-editor at the Vietnam Television Film Center.

At that time, it was rumored that Tuan resigned to become
AVG’s General Director with annual salary of $10,000 but Tuan denied.

On December 18, AVG announced that Tuan will be AVG’s
General Director.

Tuan, born in 1957, holds a PhD in Television Technology
from Lomonosov University and the Academy of Science in the former USSR. He has
worked for more than 20 years at VTV and has been widely acclaimed for his
contributions to the network’s development.

VietNamNet attacked by hackers

In the early morning of November 6, hackers broke into
VietNamNet’s servers and deleted some data. At 3 am on November 22, hackers
continued to attack VietNamNet’s servers and destroyed the entire data.

After the server system was restored, VietNamNet together
with relevant agencies and the police agencies against hi-tech crime and
information security  collected evidences to hunt the hackers down.

In the morning of December 6, hackers once again stole an
account to change information in some articles on VietNamNet. VietNamNet’s
technicians immediately detected the attack and removed the fake information
from the website within 30 minutes.

Experts said that the seriousness of attacks to VietNamNet
proves that the attacks were organized strictly to attack one of the top online
newspapers in Vietnam.

Police are investigating the case.

PV