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03-Jun-2010
by John Moulding
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Sky Player used to upsell free-to-air homes
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Convergence TV
Griff Parry, Director of On Demand at BSkyB, has highlighted the opportunity presented by a Connected TV environment for Sky to reach out to new customers. The company is one of the pioneers of multiplatform, multi-screen viewing in Europe, having launched the Sky Player online service in 2006, an offer that now combines on-demand and linear TV. Already available on PC and the Xbox games console, the service is being made available via connected set-top boxes and televisions.
Parry said Sky Player complements and extends Sky’s existing services, is not substitutional and it has become a differentiator for the company. He outlined some typical uses of the service including access to VOD, watching sports at work and finding another screen when someone is hogging the main television.
“Another major objective is to acquire new customers,” he told delegates at the Connected TV Summit two weeks ago. “There is an obvious opportunity among people who want Sky but struggle with satellite for whatever reason. But don’t overlook the other opportunity for people who want Sky but don’t know yet. We can help them experience Pay TV for the first time and then encourage them to upgrade.”
Clearly the availability of the Sky Player on Freeview HD set-top boxes (Sky Player will soon be available on the new range of Humax IP-enabled HD Freeview set-tops) provides a route into typically free-to-air homes for the Sky subscription services, and also means Sky services can be made available on second televisions in existing Sky homes where there is no multi-room service. (For more on this, see The Connected TV opportunity for Pay TV operators ).
Parry is delighted that Sky’s focus on multiplatform and Connected TV services is being rewarded and he also told the conference that the company’s faith in the subscription TV model for online and connected services has also been validated.
“At the time we were launching Sky Player, everyone thought that free was the only viable option online but we thought that payments would work if it was done in the right way,” he said. “Asking people to pay for content they consume online seemed like a dirty thought but I am not sure there is any other industry where the idea of offering something free is considered sacrosanct.
“You pay for theatres, museums and books but the impact of the terrestrial television market, combined with the broader nature of the Web, did lead people to decide that online content had to be free.”
To hammer home the point, Parry pointed to the diminishing contribution that advertising makes to the television market compared to subscription revenues. And he declared that subscriptions give customers choice and flexibility, lead to stable service providers and reward and encourage innovation. He also stressed that Sky does have advertising revenues as well to complement the core subscription revenues.
Parry revealed that the consumption model on Sky Player is split evenly between linear and on-demand content. “That surprises some people but it is similar on television and perhaps we should have expected that it would not be wildly different.”
When questioned about Sky’s attitude to Canvas, the efforts in the UK to create a standards based platform for online video services, Parry said he believes people often overstate its importance. “Assuming it happens it will be one of several platforms within the Connected TV device space,” he said.
Although he did not exclude the possibility of Sky Player being available on a Canvas platform, he said: “Canvas does not look like a particularly attractive opportunity for a Pay TV operator like ourselves because it seems likely that it will support and defend the interests of free-to-air terrestrial incumbents.”
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About the author
John Moulding joined Videonet as editor at the start of 2010, having spent over 10 years writing about digital TV and the various technologies that have simultaneously disrupted and enriched the television business. With Videonet he is focused on the unstoppable march towards multiplatform, connected and personalized television. John was editor of Cable & Satellite International (now CSI) for six years before helping launch New Video Technology, and helped develop the IPTV World Series conference programmes from 2006-07. At home, he takes a Sky triple-play bundle, watches around one-third of content time-shifted, enjoys BBC iPlayer on television through the Wii, and eagerly awaits the arrival of YouTube on his own TV (the killer TV application for late on a Friday night). He is still loyal to channels - but can also remember when TV shut down after lunch.
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