Quote:
Originally Posted by alwaysabear
I am surprised he has given this type of interview at this time, it would have been beter to wait until after tivo had launched. Maybe he has been misquoted.
|
The gist of what the article says is a frank assessment of the pay TV world we find ourselves in. Virgin haven't and never have had a chance of ever toppling BSkyB as the pay TV powerhouse in this country and what the article suggests about not going after Sky's TV customers is spot on, it would be waste of time and resources.
What VM can do with Tivo is pitch it at higher tier subscribers and offer a lot more than linear content, even more non linear content than we get now, muddy the waters between TV and the internet if you like. Get them signed up for a decent period and see how it goes. If anyone was in any doubt about Tivo's place in the big picture shouldn't have any doubt now, it isn't going to be aimed at stealing average Joe from Sky (I don't think it ever was), in my opinion it will take a few years to get it into 10% of their own customers homes at current prices let alone pinch Sky's average punter. Now if VM get a decent slice of their own customers signed up to a high tier of service and sign a new contract then in my eyes it's job done. I would imagine in TV terms Tivo hasn't really even been that expensive a project for VM, I doubt we are talking hundreds of millions of pounds. Certainly less than the £160m they got for, in my opinion, the correct sale of VMtv.
What the article quite rightly acknowledges is that Sky have pretty much got the average Joe group of TV customers cornered, VM is never going to be able to compete at that level of customer who just want a PVR that's cheap, or free and the widest choice of TV channels. VM will probably have a hard enough job convincing the 3/4 of their own customer base who don't even have V+ first but so long as they can get a big chunk of those big spending customers aboard they have done really well and I sincerely hope they do purely on competition grounds but the market will decide as it always does and should.
But we will have a far better picture of the future when BSkyB is (probably?) sold to News Corp, there is a real opportunity to examine Sky's policy over access to their content and it should be forensically scrutinised if News Corp are indeed successful in buying the remaining share. If the sale just goes through unchallenged then I think Virgin and everyone else may as well consider giving up on Pay TV altogether at some point.