Media Prima Bhd expects its newly-launched intelligent online video portal, TonTon, to break even in the next 12 to 18 months.

According to group managing director Amrin Awaluddin, TonTon will revolutionise the digital broadcasting landscape, offering world-class content from Hollywood movies to hit Asian drama series.

“With TonTon, we are able to expand on our revenue based from our core revenue contribution from TV, print and radio,” he said at a media briefing after the launch of TonTon in Petaling Jaya today.

The TonTon portal is a project of Alt Media, Media Prima’s digital communications and broadcasting subsidiary.

Amrin said the investment in setting up the TonTon portal was about RM10 million.

“We are targeting two million registered users,” he said, adding that the response was expected to be good, especially as it provided a new platform for accessing content with the BlackBerry, i-Phone and personal computer.

Alt Media’s chief executive officer Ahmad Izham Omar said while content viewing was free for now on TonTon, exclusive and premium content could carry some charges at a later date.

“TonTon will avoid the bandwidth bottleneck in Malaysia that comes from international access by hosting all the content locally while the use of adaptive streaming allows the best bit-rate to be delivered according to a user’s available bandwidth,” he said.

TonTon is a project developed with Accenture, the global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, and VioCorp, a Sydney-based company that provided the technology and design.

“TonTon also received bandwidth support from Akamai, the provider of market-leading cloud-based computing services for optimising a variety of Web and mobile content and applications,” Ahmad said.

“What we aim to provide is effective and breakthrough advertising through the portal,” he said.

TonTon can be experienced at the www.tonton.com.my website.

Amrin described TonTon as “a huge step forward for Media Prima”.

“We expect our performance this year to be better than last year. As for NSTP (New Straits Times Press), it is doing well now and repositiong some of its products,” he said.

Media Prima now holds a 96.12 percent stake in NSTP pursuant to its takeover offer launched on June 28, 2010. The closing date for the offer has been extended to 5pm Aug 20, 2010.

On the remaining NSTP shares, Amrin said some shareholders with shares that once traded on Singapore’s Credit Limit Order Book (CLOB) were difficult to locate.

- Bernama