Next month Sky Go will officially take Sky fully multiscreen. Julian Clover looks at the market.
Gone these days is the cry that satellite can’t do that because it has no return path. Those 14k modems that we attempted to use to run interactive services have given way to full connectivity.
Helping this along are the second and third screens that are an increasingly important part of any pay-TV offer, whatever the platform. Sky Go will launch on July 6, offering UK viewers the chance to see many of their favourite channels on mobile devices. The phrase many of is key as we still have a situation where channels, or should that be programmes, are not available because of issues with the rights holders.
We have been here before of course, the holding back of channels for perceived market advantage has been with us since Logie Baird was a boy, and by the time there are enough devices in the market the problem will no doubt be solved. It will come as no surprise that there is a near complete line-up of Sky-branded channels on Sky Go.
Those devices, usually an iPad or iPhone, but increasingly also Android are purchased by the consumer, not the operator, so no additional subscriber acquisition costs there.
The question is what happens to all those multiroom subscriptions. 2,237,000 at the end of March for BSkyB, paying £10 a time. Would any migrate away towards a service bundled in with their ‘basic’ subscription. Probably not. Not only are these people likely to be high consumers of television, they are more likely than not going to have the latest devices.
So could this be the dawn of a mobile TV business model that actually works? Maybe. The past two summers have seen Sky offer free access to its content over mobile, amid a few terms and conditions, suggesting that in the past the carrot wasn’t necessarily there before.
But we know from the success of the BBC iPlayer that access to TV content starts to follow its own pattern, adding audiences out of peak.
It’s strange that as people are installing ever-larger screens, it’s becoming ever-easier to watch on smaller ones.
