Will connected television render traditional channels irrelevant? In short no, since connected TV provides an opportunity to engage more deeply with the consumer. That’s very important for a brand like Discovery which is all about satisfying curiosity. So the question for us is how do we use our enormous library of content to extend the viewing experience to multi-screen? For example, it could be looking at a map of Alaska while watching Gold Rush. It will take time to figure out, especially for non-live content, but the second screen is where we see the extension of our brand.
Will premium rights ownership trump functionality on cross device experiences? If it’s good people will figure out a way to watch it; if it’s bad then they won’t. People want to use functionality to get to content. If you create an amazing show then people will watch it, even on a three inch screen.
What has been the biggest recent change in Discovery’s production processes?
The way we connect all of our production, business and distribution systems together to produce not just for the broadcast environment but for multi-screens. Two years ago this was hard - while the ambition was there, the tools were not. Now we are looking at our entire infra- structure and how we design web pages using open source tools so that we can create one web environment and automatically transfer that to iPad or smartphone. It’s a very exciting evolution. The ability to create one web page for publication across multiple platforms means we are more efficient in how we create and manage content, and affords us a better chance of monetising at the front end.
Will Discovery launch a 3D channel in Europe? We have no plans to launch a linear 3D channel in Europe but of course we do create and distribute 3D program- ming to various partners. We would love 3DTV set sales to go faster. 3D is not going as fast as HD did and the biggest hurdle is the need to wear glasses, but autostereo displays will come and we were always playing a long game. We’ve learned a lot about how to produce in 3D and to tell a story in 2D as well as 3D in a way that drives down cost. We’ve
confirmed that if consumers have an opportunity to watch content that is closer to reality they will migrate toward that. So as the market develops we are right there and ready to go.
Brian Sullivan CEO, Sky Deutschland
Region: Germany By Chris Forrester
B
rian Sullivan is the ex-BSkyB staffer who has confounded all the experts and turned the News Corp-backed German pay TV service from huge
losses into break even and with profits now firmly in sight. He also hints at future signifi- cant changes ahead for the broadcaster. Sullivan has been in position barely three years, and says Sky Deutschland enjoys consid- erable advantages over Sky UK. “The challenges are not that different to those when we launched just over three years ago: we are still a very small company in a very immature, although rapidly developing, payTV market. We have a huge amount of potential but we need to turn that into hard numbers. It’s clear that we now have very real momentum in Germany but businesses like ours, and especially in payTV, benefit enormously from scale. All of our research shows that our subscribers are very happy with what they are now receiving.”
Sullivan admits that the question most asked of him is whether there was a single ‘magic bullet’ which turned the Sky Deutschland operation around: “The answer is there was never a single one. We had to concentrate on each and every element of the service, but I also think we’re in the right place at the right time. I’d love to say that this was all part of a great master plan but it wouldn’t be true. “However, I do think we are now with the right
product at the right time and place in the market. Every good success story needs a little bit of luck and I think we are having that bit of luck.”
Asked how different German pay TV subscribers were from their UK counterparts, Sullivan said perhaps there is something of generational change taking place. “People are more interested in getting some- thing of a higher quality and they’re willing to pay for that. Germans are technologically very savvy. They research and study their options very care- fully. What this means is that once you’ve succeeded in winning that customer, then satis- faction and retention is much greater because they’ve considered the product much more. They stick around longer and this helps us cure the biggest single variable in the payTV business, which is churn or retention of your customer. In fact, I would much prefer to have an informed consumer than an impulsive consumer.” As to the future Sullivan admits that Sky Deutschland’s road map contains about twenty key changes. Not least is improving the capture and display of data to screens. “We’re investing heavily in placing lots of the technology onto the actual TV screen, especially around things like sports apps. To us, this isn’t about old fashioned interactivity because we know that viewers want to be relatively passive while watching TV, but this technology allows their experience to be customised by them - if they want to play around more with the system, they can.” Finally, Sullivan says that Sky Deutschland’s
future includes Ultra-HD. Sullivan masterminded BSkyB’s adoption of HD and 3DTV. “We already have a U-HD project working here. It’s all early days but as you would imagine, I am a great enthusiast for it.”
The payTV service that Germans were being offered simply wasn’t good enough. The rules here are the same as anywhere else in payTV: the customer wants good value