ott story_ott cover story 21/04/2015 20:35 Page 4
“Customers have
access to the very
best content, on
their own terms.”
Jeremy Darroch, Sky
service’s Q1
2015
Results
Earnings
Conference
Call. Reed
Hastings,
chairman and chief executive officer, said the
company’s subs growth stemmed from the fact
that Netflix had continued the focus on the
same things over the last couple of years,
improving the content, improving the
streaming, improving the user interface. “And
we have seen the rewards of that in continued
growth. I think this quarter in particular, we
had some amazing original content with
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, with House of
Cards, with Bloodline. And so all of that
MIPTV Talks
OTT TV
I
ndustry executives
attending annual content
market MIPTV in Cannes
mid-April noted the
growing power of OTT TV.
Daniel Nordberg, head of
content acquisition at
Opera Software, noted that
some OTT platforms were
actively competing with
broadcasters to whom they
were licensing content and
that in some cases, content
value decreases over time.
“That’s why Vessel is
offering a $3.99 ‘first-run’
release window,” he noted,
giving producers the
chance to control their
content. He also suggested
that ‘TV Everywhere’ can be
a misnomer, as it is really
‘content’ that consumers
are seeking, irrelevant of its
origin. “The premium
experience is important,” he
suggested, recommending
that in such cases, it should
be on discreet platforms.
He also felt that news
outlets such as CNN and
the BBC were likely to face
18 TV Everywhere
compounded to really
push us forward and
certainly what you are
seeing is all of
Internet TV growing.
The attention of the
new launches of the
competitors is only
creating a bigger
ecosystem, drawing more and more people
into thinking, ‘Hey I have got a check that out
and try this Internet TV thing’,” he suggested.
Hastings also offered some observations on
the pricing strategy of new OTT entrants such
as HBO NOW and Sony Vue. “I think HBO at
$15 is a great value,” he declared, admitting he
had traditionally paid more than $15 to his
cable company for it. “So I think they are
doing great work with their premium content.
It does create an obvious underline of just how
great the value is of Netflix with prices ranging
from $7.99 to $11.99. But we are really
comfortable with that strategy. We are
continuing to grow with this strategy and it is
an incredible value. But I think we you should
really think about it is all the Internet services
HBO Now, Netflix and Hulu are great values
competition from social
networking sites. “They are
offering a new way of
consuming news.”
Jeremy Darroch, CEO of
Sky, suggested that the
enlarged group, following the
acquisition of Sky
Deutschland and Sky Italia,
was well placed to meet
growing customer
expectations of content
quality, choice and
availability, with the
company’s OTT offerings set
to play a key role going
forward.
Participating in a MIPTV
Media Mastermind Keynote,
Darroch told delegates that
the demand from cust