CTAM EuroSummit 2012 – VIENNA. Pay-TV operators are in the best position to offer TV Everywhere services, said Stuart Sikes of Parks Associates and everyone on stage seemed to agree with him.
“Between ten and twenty percent of people say they will pay for such a service,” said Sikes, “and In some countries the percentage is even higher.”
“Pay-TV seems to disintegrate, but on the other hand TV everywhere revenue is an unsustainable business. Disintegration is Potentially quite damaging, but pay-TV providers are in the best position to offer these new services.”
“Our task is to offer Convenience for the consumer,” said Erwin Rensen, director, proposition management at Ziggo, Holland’s biggest operator. “We need to ofer flexibility to make content consumption possible everywhere. Of course this may damage our business model, as Some content providers might offer it cheaper, but we try and be the best provider for our customers. The worst case scenario us that you are becoming just an access provider. We are in a battle, because consumers are leaving, so we need to offer our services across the home.”
Gary Davey, EVP programming at Sky Deutschland, commented on the exploding number of OTT on-demand and everywhe services. “There is a lot of disappointment. If people can’t find content they want, they will stop paying.”
There are around 72 services in Germany and another seven will launch before Christmas. “They are all low price. There a lot of players, but they se all quite small, There is lot of confusion but the will be consolidation, but it will take a long time. The level of entry to the market is pretty low, as the technical costs have gone down dramatically.”
One of the way to differentiate is to offer faster access to desirable content, such as cent HBO series from the US. Sky D is bringing these series within hours of the original US broadcast with German dubbing or subtitling, “We serve a very small niche with this service and don’t bother about German versioning, but we think it is important.”
“When people want some particular content, they sure are gonna get it,” said Tivo’s Joshua Danovitz, “But It is not just a piece of content, it is a full tv experience.”
Content discovery and recommendations are important parts of the Tivo service and it seems to add value – at least according to experience from bcith Com Hem in Sweden and Virgin in the UK.
“We help people to discover and find content they already have access to using Tivo,” said Com Hem’s Annika Sten-Parson. “People have the impression they have access to more content,” according to Virgin’s Aleks Habdank.
