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Freeview confident of strong future despite failure to hit first year penetration target

Liz RossFreeview general manager Liz Ross has admitted Freeview Plus will fall short of its first year targets but insisted it was well placed to become an integral part of the TV viewing experience in Australia.

Ross said penetration of HbbTV FreeviewPlus will be above five per cent by the time of its first anniversary in September but conceded it would not reach the original target of reaching one in 10 households.

The “slower than expected” arrival of Freeview Plus certified Samsung products and retailers “sitting on the fence” have made such targets “tricky”, Ross said.

The comments came as Ross revealed Freeview is about to investigate claims from IceTV that consumers will be able to access Freeview Plus through its own Personal Video Recorder.

Speaking to Mumbrella at the launch of the first Personal Video Recorders (PVR) that will enable consumers to access and record Freeview Plus programs, Ross said: “We are not releasing any figures [about market penetration]. When we first launched we were targeting 10% in the first year, but Samsung have been a bit slower than we thought so that may make that target a bit tricky to deliver by September.”

She added: “We won’t be too far behind and it will be somewhere between five and 10 per cent.”

With five major TV manufacturers producing FreeviewPlus certified products, and three set top boxes and three PVRs expected to be available by September, the service was becoming increasingly accessible at a reasonable cost, Ross said.

“Our job gets easier through the ubiquity of the products in retailers,” she said. “That will take about three years. In our third year consumers will be able to walk into a retailer and 80 or 90 per cent of products will be Freview Plus certified.”

Ross explained that some retailers have been “fence sitting”, giving the example of one company – who she declined to identify -who is waiting to see how sales of the set top boxes go before stocking the product.

The first Freeview Plus certified PVR has been manufactured by Dish TV, the same company behind the first set top box which went on sale last month. It will cost around $300, compared to the $149 for the STB.

Freeview Plus Ross also flagged the launch of a new TV-led marketing campaign this year, but declined to name the new creative agency who is working on the project, or a timeframe for the new push.

She said the organisation needs to get its “ducks in a row” before announcing further details.

“We are looking forward to a new agency. The pitch was absolutely focused on a new fantastic TV campaign” she said.

She confirmed work has started on the creative, saying it will be “very different” to its first TV push.

“We have more products and will be ramping up our TV campaign, educating consumers, driving consumers into retail. We will be trying to achieve a lot,” she said.

As more product on the shop floor becomes FreeviewPlus certified, the greater the accessibility and more knowledgable retailers and consumers will become, she added. That, turn, will reduce the “marketing worry”, she said.

“Until now the ‘what is Freeview’ question was possibly a reasonable question, but our mission and objective for the future is about new platforms. I am hopeful the cynics will see what we are doing and where we are heading.

“It’s about aggregation and some of the smartest people in TV globally are saying that in your top five strategies in TV content delivery, aggregation is right up there, if not number one, and aggregation is what we are doing.”

Marketing director Scott Mota added that for every negative comment directed at Freeview “we have 200,000 unique visits to our website enquiring about Freeview Plus”.

Ross admitted the emergence of streaming companies has created a “lot of competitive clutter” but insisted regular free-t0-air TV remains hugely important.

“We are absolutely targeting middle Australia with this,” Ross added. “They are the people who are watching more TV on their TV. It wasn’t designed for an under 30 audience.”

Meanwhile, Ross said she was unhappy with a recent claim by IceTV that it would soon provide access to Freeview Plus, arguing it could potentially damage the Freeview brand if, as expected, the customer experience is “lousy”.

“I am not happy they made reference to FreeView Plus,” she said. “They intimated you would get a good experience through IceTV and we are about to investigate that claim.

“Based on testing and certification required with the manufacturers we’d be very surprised if you had a seamless Freeview Plus experience on their box. The odds are stacked against that.

“They can do whatever they want, but they need to be careful about making claims about Freeview Plus because it is not going to be helpful for consumers if they get hold of an IceTV box and they have a really lousy experience.

“They will think Freeview Plus is lousy and we don’t want any brand damage in the market. The more products the merrier but I am not going to be happy if it is not a good quality experience.”

Steve Jones

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