Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave42
Liberty chief John Malone sets out Virgin growth plans
8 August, 2013 | By Peter White
Liberty Global founder John Malone has addressed rank-and file Virgin Media employees and Chellomedia content staff at a town hall meeting in London.
Malone, who rarely travels by plane, made a trip from the US to rally staff at the meeting and cement plans to grow the cable business over the next few years.
During an open question-and-answer session at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Malone talked about his history in the UK – he was previously a shareholder in Telewest – and how the market has changed over the past 10 years.
Malone also talked through growth opportunities, particularly around innovations for Virgin Media’s television service and quad-play offer.
Liberty Global acquired Virgin Media in February for £10.2bn and Malone reiterated that the deal was designed to quickly add significant scale in Europe’s largest and most dynamic media market.
The buyout means that Liberty Global has more than 25 million customers in 14 countries.
Malone hired former BSkyB executive Tom Mockeridge as chief executive in May, after former chief exec Neil Berkett decided to step down following the sale.
In addition to Mockeridge’s appointment, there have been a number of changes to the Virgin Media management in the past few months, including the departure of Cindy Rose, executive director of digital entertainment, and the promotion of long-term Liberty Global European programming executive Stephane David to VM executive director of content.
This week, Liberty Global restructured the management of its Central and Eastern European division to drive further international co-operation following the Virgin Media deal.
The meeting was attended by more than 200 employees of Virgin Media, Liberty Global and its content arm Chellomedia, which operates dozens of channels worldwide and was recently put up for sale.
there you go Clint
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I do not feel too optimistic about this. As much I try and stay positive this does not inspire me greatly. Just exactly what can the new "innovations" be? A new STB? (if it is better than TIVO, great, but I don't want to lose TIVO just for 6 tuners and more space.) new mobile phones? more app's? faster BB?
Whilst I am pretty happy with the content we receive (a couple of extra HD variants would not go amiss Nat Geo Wild HD and possibly History and Universal HD), I know many others are not. No mention was made of content (not that there is too much left to get), or improved communication for that matter, just growth through "innovation".
The only positive I take (and will continue to take) from this is the fact some of the liberty global team are joining VM. This coupled with
possible money from the sale of Chellomedia,
could mean that Liberty Global can
possibly give VM the help and financial support and business nous it needs to finally reach it's potential on the TV/app side of the business, which is where the best chance of growth lies, surely?
With regards to communication, it would not take much to improve in the short term. Whilst we know there is nothing happening with SA/BT Sports, it only takes a post a day on Twitter and Facebook to say "no news on BT Sport today, sorry" to pacify many, many customers.
---------- Post added at 12:01 ---------- Previous post was at 11:57 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhatter67
Cindy gone, shame I don't think she done that bad of a job, how many HD channels do we have again compared to BT!
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True, but the app statement did turn out to be a shocker of a statement. I am sure she believed it would happen when she said it, but alas, something went wrong that she simply could not rectify.