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Old 27-06-2017, 15:25   #1
OLD BOY
Rise above the players
 
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Linear is old tech - on demand is the future

Well, that's what Virgin Media seem to think, and this interesting piece suggests that our cableco at least is set to move on from the traditional scheduled TV means of providing content.

This rather suggests that the days of more and more digital channels being added to VM may be coming to an end, in favour of a bigger and more comprehensive on demand selection from multiple sources.

The question now is, how much longer do we have to wait before we see some more streaming services added to our TV packages?

http://www.digitaltveurope.net/71015...pen-platforms/

Virgin Media: future of pay TV means more open platforms

Only pay TV providers that aggregate multiple content providers together are likely to have a future, according to David Bouchier, chief digital entertainment officer, Virgin Media.

Speaking at Marketforce’s Future of Broadcasting conference this morning, Bouchier also said that in the medium term, Liberty Global-owned Virgin Media faced the challenge of addressing two different audiences with conflicting needs.

For younger audiences on-demand viewing is the norm, said Bouchier, but the majority still spend 83% of their time watching linear viewing.

Most on-demand content is time-shifted viewing. Driven by the younger segment, there is a “dramatic decline” in the number of hours recorded on DVRs as people switch to on-demand, he said.

“We have to provide a service…to both ends,” said Bouchier, in this “tale of two audiences”.

Bouchier said that Virgin had “to go in a different direction to its competitors” with TV. “We are talking about moving away from simple linear TV and that [old] multichannel line-up,” he said. “Linear is the old technology and…not a valid pay TV proposition on its own.”

Bouchier said “one brand is not enough”, meaning that Virgin has to provide a way for content partners to shift to an on-demand model. He cited the example of the Netflix app on Virgin’s platform, and the availability of on-demand viewing across screens on the platform, as showing the way ahead.

Bouchier said that Virgin’s ability to bring multiple content sources together in a bundle delivers value to consumers and provides something that individual service providers such as Netflix can’t match. He said that the large global subscription video-on-demand companies are learning “a difficult truth” that the customer relationship established by the likes of Virgin Media, as a provider of bundled services, is “sticky” and “powerful”. For Netflix and others, keeping customers is a challenging business.

“This [bundling] is core to our business. When you look at that fragmenting viewership…I am actually quite confident about where pay TV is going,” he said, arguing that no single online player offered sufficient value on its own. What Virgin needs to do is become “multi-service” player with market-leading broadband, he said.

Last edited by OLD BOY; 27-06-2017 at 15:31.
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