Seven confirms HbbTV services around Australian Open but rivals remain tight lipped
Seven’s Kurt Burnette
Network Seven has become the first Australian TV network to open serve in the television sports wars revealing it will have multiple online HbbTV telecasts for the 2015 Australian Open in January.
Kurt Burnette, chief revenue officer for Seven West Media, shed new light on some of the network’s HbbTV plans in an interview with Mumbrella, revealing the network was planning IPTV plays around the Australian tennis grand slam, its news bulletins and the previously announced health and lifestyle online channel Healthy Me TV.
The moves come as the television industry prepares for tomorrow night’s launch of Freeview Plus, a hybrid broadcast broadband TV service offering both catch up TV as well as the ability to serve multiple IPTV channels on television sets, ideal for sports coverage.
However, Seven’s rivals are remaining tight lipped about their plans for the new service, insisting that they would adopt a wait and see approach to offering additional content on the HbbTV service.
In an interview with Mumbrella, Burnette signalled that January’s tennis competition would be the first time where consumers would see new additional sport channels served up on Seven’s IPTV service, under a new broadcast deal which gives Seven the digital as well as broadcast rights for the tournament.
“The next iteration (of HbbTV) you will start to see around the Australian Open and the summer of tennis,” said Burnette.
“People will start to see what the value proposition is as they buy the new sets or link up sets to be compatible. For us, you will see that happen not at launch but into the start of next year.
“It won’t be at launch. We want to get what we have up at launch and make sure it is working and get people used to how the service will be working.”
Seven’s general manager of group technical services Trevor Bird said the tennis was ideally suited to the enhanced offering that HbbTV technology will provide TV networks.
“When you look at a tennis tournament you might start out with a lot of preliminary matches in outside courts and we might not be able to cover some of those courts live because we are looking at the action on centre court,” said Bird.
“But you might have a kid from Perth or Adelaide, who viewers want to watch, playing on court six and we would have the ability to stream that over the top to the television sets so that people who want to take an interest in that particular athlete can do that.
“We can provide more content than ever before and provide that more niche style content to people who want to see it without them leaving the TV set.”
Seven is not the only TV network currently in planning for additional content and advertising opportunities around the new Freeview Plus product.
Chief digital officer for Network Ten Rebekah Horne confirmed that the network had also been in confidential discussions with potential partners around Freeview Plus.
She said: “I do think that the functionality that HbbTV provides is one that will really resonate with advertisers, especially as they seek to convert that path to purchase. But I think it is really important that we understand the consumer behaviour before we assume any functionality on their behalf.”
Nine sales boss Peter Wiltshire said his Network was also seeing strong but measured interest in the potential of the new technology.
“There is a significant amount of interest in that it is a new technology and a new opportunity for advertisers,” said Wilshire, group sales and marketing director for Nine. “At the same I think everybody has their reality cap on and that says the numbers in the early stages will be extremely small and we would prefer to have a clean model in the early stages until we establish the technology from a consumer experience point of view.
“As the numbers grow and then start to look at the commercialisation opportunities.”
Seven’s Burnette argued that part of the way market penetration would be driven is through compelling content on the IPTV side of the hybrid offering.
It was for this reason the Seven sales boss said that the network was ensuring it had strong news and health offerings ahead of its rivals.
“We will be launching our news service (in HbbTV) and that will be up and running so you will have the local broadcast bulletin each night on hybrid, depending on which state you are in,” said Burnette. ” It will be up at launch – that will be the 6 o’clock news will be up on hybrid for 24 hour until the next bulletin.
“We also have HealthyMeTV that will be looking to get onto hybrid when it launches.
“The conversations we are having aren’t necessarily because people are asking about hybrid TV. We have already been talking about it for a year.”
Nic Christensen
