Sep 21, 2023

September 21, 2023 12.54 Europe/London Credit: Richard Kendal/RTS Sky CEO Dana Strong has told the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention the “vast majority” of new customers to the Sky platform are taking one of its new IP products. Eight out of ten of them are new to Sky. Customers have a choice of the established Sky Q product and accompanying satellite dish, the Sky Glass integrated streaming TV or the standalone Sky Stream. Strong said Sky and its new Entertainment OS that feeds both the streaming products offered a very different integration of the PSB services, with their apps deeply integrated, alongside the major apps like Netflix, Amazon and Apple. “By bringing all of that content to exist on one interface, I guess you would say, where that content is democratized, it means that customers don’t have to go into an app search and search and shirts and go into a different app and search and search. It’s all there. And it accelerates really the speed to accessing your content, your speed to joy.” Strong confirmed there were no immediate plans to switch off the established satellite service: “We have millions of customers that love their service on the satellite dish with a Q platform… We have no desire to disrupt them, but we want to give the customers the choice.” Strong said she was “pretty delighted” with the performance of Sky Glass. In July, the 55-inch model was the best-selling in the UK, while for the full year Sky Glass was the fastest-selling 65-inch UHD. Looking at Sky’s international markets, Strong described them as being on “different points of the maturity curve”. The UK customer was pitched a fully integrated suite of services from the original TV service through to home insurance while Italy was at the halfway point.” “Germany has been a notoriously difficult market for pay-TV. I think everybody knows that the German consumer has always gravitated towards free content. What’s amazing is that in Germany, there’s never been a bigger, better time for pay -V in Germany, right? We’re at a peak in terms of paying households. It’s gone up by 60% in the last five years. So and that’s really as a result of a lot of growth and streaming.” Stong said Sky had “locked in” a new management team for Germany and was clear-minded about what it wanted to achieve there.