TalkTalk’s position in the UK market is to be a value player, according to Will Ennett, its head of TV content.
Speaking at the OTTtv World Summit 2017, he added that the company has seen a significant growth in linear viewing in the last year. This has translated into sales and given a boost for such services as Sky Cinema.
Ennett said that TalkTalk had carefully examined its kids proposition and found that while traditional content provided by linear channels was very popular, there was a desire for more control. It therefore decided to introduce a kids remote, which costs £5 a month including content or can be bought for a one-off fee.
Commenting on pricing, Ennett said that when TalkTalk launched five years ago it had 30-day rolling contracts. Now it has many fixed price plans on bundles, with a lot of its focus being on TV.
Asked about subscription models, Ennett said that they did not include AVOD, with the company not having acquired a library of shows and put it in an ad-funded model.
However, it does have a TVOD service, with purchases being possible for anyone in the UK. In his view, movies to buy are a growing sector.
With SVOD, on the other hand, TalkTalk tends not to purchase large libraries.
Ennett also said that its key partners are its existing ones. They include such companies as Sky and UKTV.
Asked about the performance of NOW and Netflix on TalkTalk, Ennett said that the services operate as independent apps so there was not much data available. However, they were both popular and successful.