Sky announced performance numbers and drops HD Ticket Fee

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Reply # 2192830 7-Mar-2019 09:47

dafman:

Just an observation. The basic tenor of Sky discussions threads has shifted in recent months from 'what Sky needs to do to stay in business' to 'what will inevitably replace Sky'

Ive not seen that. Its usually been the usual banter. What has changed now, more so that a similar and brief thread 6 months ago, is that the share price is much lower. AND Fellett "retired". AND new CEO overseas looking for investors. AND its normal for them to lose say 30 or 40k subscribers, thats a lot but a low % BUT the profit they will earn this year of 100M is 100k subscribers revenue, 100,000 subscribers x annual ARPU of $1000 (12 x $80 ARPU) So losing the usual numbers is now a BIG part of what profit they still have

So, its now getting dire. They cannot just cut expenses. They cannot just increase subscribers as these are already in decline at the rate of a few tens of thousands per year. If they dropped prices by $10 thats $100 loss per each 10 subscribers x 750,000 of them. They would need 2 new subscribers out of each 10 they already have to make ground, AS WELL as stopping churn immediately. A $10 decrease in price won't do that, its too small, but hey they already have with HD. Although not everyone has HD and they have increased prices by a few dollars. They could drop content, but they have already paid for it, and even then, dropping content reduces value so more leave

From here on I cannot see them innovating or improving to stop this, a wholesale change is needed. two things need to happen. Reduce pricing a decent amount, the amount that will cause people to re join. Sky NZ I don't feel can do that in this country.

Actually, another option is they don't get replaced, as the only people affected are sports viewers, so we buy non geo blocked apps, as there are no rights here so we can do that.

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Reply # 2192834 7-Mar-2019 09:51

Rikkitic:

I am trying to think what difference dealing with a NZ-based company made when we were Sky subscribers. We rarely needed to contact support, but the one or two times I did, it was just the usual clicking through automated responses and talking to someone working from a script. Other than the Kiwi accent, I can't really think how this was any better or worse than an overseas service. Local content? I guess there is Face, though how local that is can be a matter of definition. There is Freeview, but we have that anyway. Sky News? All Australian with the occasional token mention of NZ and some free filler from our Parliament TV, which is on Freeview anyway. I can't recall anything about Sky content that is specific to New Zealand. I'm not a sports fan so maybe there is some stuff there that I am not aware of, but I don't really get the 'Sky is local' argument. I think it could be all Australian, or even American, and I doubt viewers would notice much difference.

Local help support isn't needed. the very few times I have contacted them they were very good. if its SVOD and not satellite that would increase you would think. The other mention of local was content, basketball was mentioned. Its really only about sport.

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Reply # 2192859 7-Mar-2019 10:41

tdgeek:
Rikkitic:

I am trying to think what difference dealing with a NZ-based company made when we were Sky subscribers. We rarely needed to contact support, but the one or two times I did, it was just the usual clicking through automated responses and talking to someone working from a script. Other than the Kiwi accent, I can't really think how this was any better or worse than an overseas service. Local content? I guess there is Face, though how local that is can be a matter of definition. There is Freeview, but we have that anyway. Sky News? All Australian with the occasional token mention of NZ and some free filler from our Parliament TV, which is on Freeview anyway. I can't recall anything about Sky content that is specific to New Zealand. I'm not a sports fan so maybe there is some stuff there that I am not aware of, but I don't really get the 'Sky is local' argument. I think it could be all Australian, or even American, and I doubt viewers would notice much difference.

Local help support isn't needed. the very few times I have contacted them they were very good. if its SVOD and not satellite that would increase you would think. The other mention of local was content, basketball was mentioned. Its really only about sport.

The only thing that keeps me interested in sky is sport , I have no interest in their other programs it's the only reason I keep resigning up for sky deals. The problem with buying SVOD for each sport it becomes very expensive even dearer than sky. The foxtel sport offering Kayo is amazing pricing for what you get I wonder how they will make money from it

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Reply # 2192862 7-Mar-2019 10:43

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The only thing that keeps me interested in sky is sport , I have no interest in their other programs it's the only reason I keep resigning up for sky deals. The problem with buying SVOD for each sport it becomes very expensive even dearer than sky. The foxtel sport offering Kayo is amazing pricing for what you get I wonder how they will make money from it

Kayo have introduced it at a non sustainable price, just like many companies do to get people "hooked" over time it will increase in price to the price point it should have been up front. I suspect you'll be paying $35 for that in time.

As I have predicted a few times, it won't be too long now till people realize that Sky (and sport) wasn't the rip off they once thought it was.

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Reply # 2192865 7-Mar-2019 10:47

Stu1:

The only thing that keeps me interested in sky is sport , I have no interest in their other programs it's the only reason I keep resigning up for sky deals. The problem with buying SVOD for each sport it becomes very expensive even dearer than sky. The foxtel sport offering Kayo is amazing pricing for what you get I wonder how they will make money from it

@Ockel may have an insight on that

Better deal as a higher volume deal?

Many of the sports are cheap bits and pieces

Some rights deals might be based on views? (so you won't be overpaying)

Lower operating costs as just an app, might hang off their existing CDN arrangements?

tdgeek

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Reply # 2192868 7-Mar-2019 10:49

networkn:

As I have predicted a few times, it won't be too long now till people realize that Sky (and sport) wasn't the rip off they once thought it was.

Agree on that

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Reply # 2192876 7-Mar-2019 11:01

If you look at thee subscriber graph at https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12205399

It lines up nicely with Netflix launching in March 2015. This infers that prior to Netflix, Kiwi's were prepared to pay for Sky. Netflix has very very little competing content with Sky. This tells me that the sole reason for Sky's downturn is that the Netflix effect of $20 per month is the proper price. The totally bizarre thing is that they hardly compete. Not that many have Sky Movies. Netflix doesn't have sport. Sky doesn't air hardly any TV series. Bizarre. I can understand movie watchers bailing, but there cannot be that many?

Rikkitic

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Reply # 2192933 7-Mar-2019 12:19

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networkn:

As I have predicted a few times, it won't be too long now till people realize that Sky (and sport) wasn't the rip off they once thought it was.

I have thought about this a bit because it keeps coming up. I can’t speak about sports, which I know is a special case, and I haven’t had Sky for awhile now, so I can’t say what it is like at this moment. But I know what it was like for us over the many years we had it before streaming became an option for us. I know what our perception of it, and that of at least some others, was. We felt ripped off, especially in the later years.

Why? Because when Sky had it all, communication was a one-way street. A simple example is their programme guide. We also have those in Holland, and they also have an editor’s page, just like Sky. But in Holland there was space for reader feedback and it was published, good or bad. Sometimes the broadcasters listened, and changed the way they did some things. With Sky, there has never been an option for that. You just get the propaganda blurb from the ‘editor’ about how wonderful everything is and that’s it. I have never seen any mechanism of any kind for submitting feedback or suggestions. To me this implies arrogance and an unwillingness to listen to what customers think. You are just consumer fodder and that is the end of the matter. When Sky was the only game in town, they could get away with this sniffing disregard of the paying customer. Having become accustomed to treating their fodder with contempt, they were unable to respond in time when some real competition finally came along. Rightly or wrongly, this is the perception they left me with.

Yet if you go way back in time, back to the 90’s when Sky first appeared and finally offered an alternative to TV NZ, they were heroes. Their subsequent satellite service brought television to people who otherwise couldn’t get it. The range of content was enormous compared to what had existed before. There were actually people who loved Sky. I know one.

At the beginning of this century, Sky enjoyed immense customer goodwill. Over time this gradually dissipated. My own perception, which I know I am not unique in, is that Sky got greedy. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was just scrabbling to survive, as some here indicate. But the perception was greed. This came partly from the one-way communications, partly from a failure to keep up with technological improvements elsewhere, partly from poorly-implemented innovations like Sky Go, partly from the seeming penny-pinching on even basic services, or the own goal of launching Neon in SD only. There are many other examples of this kind of thing. Whether justified or not, the perception this creates in a lot of people is one of a company that only wants your money, the more the better, and wants it for as little in return as possible.

Over time the value of Sky, at least in other areas than sports, has gone down for the money demanded. Better and cheaper options have come along. Sky has been slow to respond, or has responded poorly by imagining that it could put the streaming genie back in the bottle. Its efforts to deal with the new reality have seemed grudging and half-hearted.

For those who enjoy television, Sky represented fantastic value for money in 2000. It has steadily gone downhill since then.

Again, I can’t speak about sports, but what about other content over the years? Sky has dabbled in the margins a little with the short-lived sci-fi channel and low-budget 1960s re-runs, but for the most part what you see today is pretty much what you saw 10+ years ago as far as I can recall. There are a handful of film channels, mostly playing old films that can be found for free (not pirated) elsewhere, a BBC entertainment channel playing mainly old comedies, a couple of documentary channels that used to be good but seem to have lost their way, and the National Geographic channel, which is about the only decent one still going. Anything still worth watching, like Rialto, Soho, Arts Channel, all costs extra. Compared to even the free channels anywhere else in the world, this is pathetic. For pay TV, it is inexcusable. Anywhere else in the world you can choose from at least hundreds of channels, minimum. Many are special interest and many are probably interesting only to a minority, but you don’t even have that choice here.

But at least with pay tv you don’t have to sit through bloody commercials. Ehhh. Wrong again. The only place even Sky hasn’t dared to stick commercials (so far) is the film channels. Everywhere else is as bad as Freeview. So what in the hell are you paying for? Who is dumb enough to pay money to watch commercials? I guess we are.

Commercials are bad enough. Worse are those damned Sky promos. I haven’t seen one in over a year but they still play in my nightmares.

Sure, this has become another rant so I will stop here. I just feel some of the comments on threads like this are a bit one-sided and every now and then I feel called upon to remind what the other side thinks.

I reject your reality and substitute my own. - Adam Savage

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Reply # 2192941 7-Mar-2019 12:37

Rikkitic:

Sure, this has become another rant so I will stop here. I just feel some of the comments on threads like this are a bit one-sided and every now and then I feel called upon to remind what the other side thinks.

Your perception of these threads bears very little resemblence to the actual bulk of sentiment.

You might want to look at what other similar services world wide are offering today. NF isn't the same as Sky, it's been said 100 times. Comparable services are Sky UK and the like. If you think our ads are intrusive, I can assure you having recently tried those overseas offerings ours are massively better. Cable networks in the USA have ads too. Netflix doesn't have ads YET, but I will bet now, that within 10 years they have a new pricing tier subsidized with ads. It's inevitable.

Sky has always been around $100 a month. It has varied slightly, but in that timeframe the cost of content has Sky Rocketed and people obviously need to be paid more over time, stuff has got more expensive. To offset that they either increase the prices or find alternative ways to subsidize the cost. Ads were the choice. I am not sure what Sky would cost without ad's but I would expect if Sky offered a Ad free tier, it would be $20-40 more a month and I would expect the uptake to be non existent.

The bottom line is this, as a result of fragmentation, the cost of entertainment in a household who wants everything that Sky offered previously, *will* be higher. If you are in the situation where you don't need a section of the content, your entertainment costs might go down, but I don't expect it to be proportional to the content you have lost in terms of value.

Ads are annoying but not a deal breaker for me. I rarely watch live, I always build in a 15 minute delay, and fast forwarding on a Sky box is 100x better than any SVOD Service I have used.

What I like about Sky is aggregated content by topic per channel. IE Food TV. You can't get that with any other service offered in NZ and certainly none that show a mix of NZ Chefs, recipes and ideas with Kiwi Flavour as WELL as stuff from the US/UK. It covers Reality, multiple genres etc. Repeats annoy me.

I don't care that people don't like Sky, so long as the reasons are logical and factual.

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Reply # 2192948 7-Mar-2019 12:50

tdgeek:
If you look at thee subscriber graph at https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12205399

It lines up nicely with Netflix launching in March 2015. This infers that prior to Netflix, Kiwi's were prepared to pay for Sky. Netflix has very very little competing content with Sky. This tells me that the sole reason for Sky's downturn is that the Netflix effect of $20 per month is the proper price. The totally bizarre thing is that they hardly compete. Not that many have Sky Movies. Netflix doesn't have sport. Sky doesn't air hardly any TV series. Bizarre. I can understand movie watchers bailing, but there cannot be that many?

Sky has a lot of TV series, you have all the programs on SoHo, BBC, Jones, Vibe and so on.
I only keep Sky because don’t have to pay for recordings ( historical Contract), otherwise would be ditched as Netflix has plenty content to fill time when want to view something.

Game of Thrones is my only really want to watch one, if didn’t have Sky then wait for blurray.

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Reply # 2192969 7-Mar-2019 12:58

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networkn:

Rikkitic:

Sure, this has become another rant so I will stop here. I just feel some of the comments on threads like this are a bit one-sided and every now and then I feel called upon to remind what the other side thinks.

Your perception of these threads bears very little resemblence to the actual bulk of sentiment.

I'm picking the tens of thousands of ex-subscribers who walked away in the last year alone share similar perceptions to Rikkitic.

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Reply # 2192971 7-Mar-2019 12:58

networkn:

[To offset that they either increase the prices or find alternative ways to subsidize the cost. Ads were the choice. I am not sure what Sky would cost without ad's but I would expect if Sky offered a Ad free tier, it would be $20-40 more a month and I would expect the uptake to be non existent.

...

I don't care that people don't like Sky, so long as the reasons are logical and factual.

Well that claim is simply not factual. According to Sky's latest annual report, adverting revenue was $57 million (down from $68 million FY17). [pg 39] Based on the figure of 768,000 customers [pg 7], that equates to $6.19/month. The customer count does include Fan Pass and Neon, so isn't exact. The $20-40 per month figure is not correct.

tdgeek

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Reply # 2192972 7-Mar-2019 12:59

dafman:

I'm picking the tens of thousands of ex-subscribers who walked away in the last year alone share similar perceptions to Rikkitic.

Why didnt they walk away in 2015, 2014 2013 etc?

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Reply # 2192973 7-Mar-2019 13:10

About a year ago I dropped Sky and was using Freeview (Freeview recorders are the work of Satan, they are all an abomination), Netflix, Prime a little Lightbox and Google. It was a total pain in the butt, one seem to be never ending searching for content (worth watching) and trying to remember if the series you were watching was on Freeview, Netflix or what ever.

I returned to Sky in the last month and oh the relief, I generally use one remote where as before there was always where is the &&^%$^ remote. No more spending/wasting time hunting for content. The small extra I pay per month is worth it 100%

Mike
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The views stated in my posts are my personal views and not that of any other organisation.

Using empathy takes no energy and can gain so much. Try it.

tdgeek

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Reply # 2192976 7-Mar-2019 13:15

MikeB4:

About a year ago I dropped Sky and was using Freeview (Freeview recorders are the work of Satan, they are all an abomination), Netflix, Prime a little Lightbox and Google. It was a total pain in the butt, one seem to be never ending searching for content (worth watching) and trying to remember if the series you were watching was on Freeview, Netflix or what ever.

I returned to Sky in the last month and oh the relief, I generally use one remote where as before there was always where is the &&^%$^ remote. No more spending/wasting time hunting for content. The small extra I pay per month is worth it 100%

I agree, its a good system, not bad for 1980's tech. And I don't need to use a 2019 phone to ask for help! I was going to drop it and get Fanpass for F1, $100 to $30, good saving. But no replays, no SkyGo, no popups. $70 is $17 a week, so what.

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