It’s a badly kept industry secret that Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB satellite TV platform saw the introduction of both interactivity and its Sky+ DVR in the U.K. as a test-bed for rolling the services out in other key territories.
Now it looks as if others are learning from both the Murdoch approach to digital product innovation and the potential of the U.K. as a greenhouse for emerging ideas and propositions which may capture the imagination of customers in other territories.
Last week, Casey Harwood, SVP of Turner Broadcasting System Europe [which operates movie channel franchise TCM, as well as a slew of kids’ channels such as Boomerang] told guests at the Broadcasting Press Guild that the mix of digital platforms in the U.K. makes it the ideal springboard for launching new media initiatives.
So what is it about the U.K. digital market which makes it unique and ripe for such experimentation?
Firstly, the U.K. enjoys an ultra-competitive multichannel market, which sees IPTV newcomers like BT Vision and Tiscali TV jostling for position alongside maturing incumbents such as Freeview and pay TV delivered by Sky and Virgin Media.
It’s fair to say that the new arrivals have yet to establish themselves with any sizeable customer base, facing not only the formidable marketing might of the incumbents, but also the challenge of trying to pithily explain the benefits of what, to many, is an entirely new way of consuming traditional TV services.
But it’s this very competitiveness which makes the U.K. such a lively market in which to pilot new services and ideas, albeit for players with relatively deep pockets.
Turner’s move reflects comparatively lower costs for market entry: trialling a new service via the web carries with it only the developments costs of the content proposition itself and any associated marketing. Contrast this with the cost of agreeing a carriage deal: whether linear or non-linear + marketing and the econmics easily stack up.
Turner aren’t the only ones watching the U.K. either: in a post earlier today, thebeyondnessofthings observed how Disney sees Blighty as a key market in determining its prospects beyond a largely North American customer base.
But a warning from history to the fearless: TiVo, the company which can be credited for attempting to make the DVR product category its own, attempted to use the U.K. as a test-bed for a pan-European rollout back in the late nineties. Through a co-marketing deal with Sky it managed to accumulate a customer base of ~ 50K subscribers, only to humiliatingly retreat from actively selling its product into the market when the very company it chose to get into bed with unashamedly learnt from its mistakes and moved in to pick up the spoils.
The Beyondness of Things 