“Nothing has changed, they were all meant to change, but they haven’t. The resilience of broadcasters is staggering when compared to magazines,” the view of the media and political commentator Andrew Neil in his annual address on behalf of SES.
Neil, who was the executive chairman of Sky Television at its launch in 1989 and a former editor of The Sunday Times said technology had not had the same disruptive effect on television as had been the case for publishing.
“All successful broadcasters know they have to be on all mediums in a way that newspaper publishers have not. Sky has reinvented itself four or five times, whereas the BBC has been a leader in the web and online broadcasting,” he told an audience of SES Astra customers.
The broadcasters had been able to harness the power of Facebook and Twitter give water cooler moments as the programme goes out.
However, referring to his own £62 per month paid to Sky, Neil said that one of the reasons for slowdown in subscriber growth at the satcaster was because it had become expensive, whereas discretionary spending normally survives during a recession.
“If you make that subscription too expensive people don’t have the money, and it looks like inflation will continue to rise greater than wages. You see cord-cutting in America where the platforms have just got too greedy and you can se that happening in Europe.”
Netflix he warned would see pressure on its pricing should it add sport and more original drama to its lineup.
YouView and Blinkbox were reduced to throwaway lines.
On the recent purchase of Virgin Media by John Malone’s Liberty Global, Neil said the US firm had something to learn. “Virgin is very adept at bundling, Virgin sells 2.5 services, whereas Liberty is 1.8 so they have something to teach.”
His analysis was that the purchase was fundamentally a tax move: “Liberty is moving its tax domicile to the UK and why wouldn’t you do that when you have £5.5 billion of tax losses to offset.”
