Kate Comments

When Sky met the Xbox...

2009-05-29T05:30:00.000-07:00

The reign of the standalone pay TV set top box is dead-killed conclusively yesterday when Sky TV in the UK unveiled a deal with Microsoft's Xbox to offer several of its channels and all its live sports channels to Xbox owners in the UK. The geographically limited offer will effectively put Sky's current PC service - Sky Player- on Xbox.
Set for an autumn launch, the new service is the first of its kind anywhere where live pay TV is offered through a gaming console, say the new partners. Microsoft won't disclose how many UK Xbox Live customers there are but worldwide they have 20 million Xbox Live (ie connected to the Net) customers.
Clearly the idea is to attract new users to the Xbox and to expand the reach of Sky to another device and another possibility for people to subscribe to Sky. The Xbox Sky service can be subscribed to separately (that will help Sky to reach its 10 million sub target by 2010) or current Sky customers at a certain level of subscription will get access to the service as part of their subscription- making it a churn reducer.
Xbox clearly likes enhancing its device and offering more reasons to buy their console and connect to an IP network to get Sky channels or play multi-player games etc.
The companies wont disclose the financial intricacies of the deal and it is unclear if current Xbox users will have to pay more for the Sky service, though this only seems to make sense.
Microsoft has also set up a UK technical development group headed by Jerry Johnson who has moved from the US to look at rolling out similar services in other European markets. He can very easily start with the other News Corp.-backed pay TV operators in Germany and Italy and move on form there.
What this means for set top box makers like Pace is clear: convergence on devices has taken another step forward and just as Tivo is now being incorporated into set top boxes, when will MIcrosoft and Sony start licensing to Pace and, dare I say, the Sky-owned Amstrad? And if they don't, where does this put Pace and Motorola? Interesting times.

ITV and all that Jazz

2009-02-22T09:03:00.000-08:00

Talking to a well-placed source over a credit crunch lunch on Friday (that means we only had an entree, no wine and no pudding but we both slipped in a cappuccino each) and the subject on all of Medialand's lips came up : whither ITV?

Has Michael Grade's stewardship - as both CEO and Chairman - worked? (not really) and just how low can the ITV share price go? (the floor keeps receding; on Friday the 20th Feb it hit a new low of 23.25p).

ITV is not in good shape and I notice that the nationals have picked up today (Sunday) something I flagged up last week in my Broadcast column -this is my blog, so I can self-promote- about what assets might be on the sales block. As I said, ITV's DTT spectrum (through its ownership of SDN) is likely to yield more than selling Friends Reunited. But all this got me thinking about stewardship. Stewardship is something that should transcend self-preservation but often doesn't. It should mean readying the group you are stewarding into for the future after you the steward leave. I think Grade's stewardship score is pretty low. Not only has the dual role thing meant he has not had a proper counterbalance at a senior level but the way he has constructed the future handover of the CEO role by creating four top executive spots all vying for it, seems to me to be at best feudal and at worst a recipe for leadership disaster. The problem is that the senior barons up for the CEO role (Rupert Howell, Peter Fincham, John Cresswell and Lee Bartlett) don't want to piss off their current boss so no rocking the boat allowed, but once one of them is named CEO the other three will very likely jump ship cause they failed to get the top job. This will leave ITV lacking a strong senior team. This is not good stewardship. Perhaps this could be overlooked in a more buoyant market but in this abysmal one, it's making Grade look bad now and ITV look badly prepared for whatever future it may have.

Obama and the E-world

2009-01-21T07:46:00.000-08:00

I watched the inauguration of President Obama on TV and online, simultaneously (Sky and bbc.co.uk, to be exact). I also sent messages to other like-minded individuals on my Facebook page. A few friends sent me SMS messages saying "wasn't that great?" or "did you hear him say.." I cried when Aretha sang and laughed at the funny bits of the benediction about yellow people being mellow and red men getting ahead, not to mention white people doing what's right...and of course I was thrilled to see Itzak Perlman and Yo-yo Ma play...and the speech. I googled the speech afterwards to read it again. And this morning, ie the day after, I read bits of the speech again in a newspaper, The Guardian, to be exact.

The point is that I was consuming the inauguration in oh so many ways and only one -and a day later - was a newspaper.

So what does this mean for the future of newspapers?

This morning I was at the press conference for the UK regulator Ofcom to disclose its recommendations for how to restructure UK broadcasting to meet the digital age and preserve public service programming (ie so it all doesn't become Big Brother and Pop Idol). They have proposed some radical measures, key among them the idea of merging Channel 4 into a joint venture or partnership with (possibly) Five or BBC Worldwide. But in the hallway before we went into the conference I had a conversation with the FT's media correspondent which was more revealing of the changes we are facing in the economics of media. He had just broken the story about the Russian oligarch (and former KGB agent) Alexander Lebedev buying the Evening Standard for £1. He was chuffed because the FT had it on their website an hour before the Guardian.

And that of course sums up the new universe we find ourselves living in: always connected means that digital scoops and Facebook conversations and SMS chats and tweets are more relevant than the paper delivered the next day. Is it any wonder why the Evening Standard sold so cheap? Is it any wonder why Channel 4's star news presenter Jon Snow has started a blog, snowblog? Snow's Blog

And it is going to get more crazy before it gets better. So why does Ofcom prefer a linkup between Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide versus Channel 4 and Five? Because BBC Worldwide is a more robust, more diversified entity with deeper resources. And in this climate of financial fallout, that counts for a lot. Newspapers are selling for a pound. But TV stations are not far behind. Just look at the music industry if you need a roadmap. FT Article on music biz

Why now?

2008-10-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

My first blog. All I can think is who is paying me to write this and the fact that I am thinking that tells you that I have come from "old media" or at least been in the journo game for a while.

So why a blog now? Well, several things have pushed me in this direction, not least that I tell the students at London School of Journalism where I occasionally teach a new media module, that they should have their own blog as a sort of calling card, so bit tough to explain away why I don't have one...

Then there is the recurring question I get from people "do you blog?" and then there was the recent request from the Midem conference oganisation that I write a blog for them and they would be "more than happy" to link the blog I wrote for them to my own blog, except of course, until now I didn't have one.

And being a financial journalist it seems appropriate to start something new just as all the financial world is being rocked around us. Images of Humpty Dumpty and high walls and God knows if Mr Paulson and his various counterparts will be able to put it all back together again.

And on a more personal note, my husband has started blogging, mostly about his new golf book (golfontheedge.co.uk if you are interested).

So, now you know why this is happening.