YouView has not “missed the boat” and will achieve scale, says Halton

YouView’s number one priority is to achieve scale, according to Richard Halton, CEO of the UK connected TV platform.

“It has to be a platform of scale, but our shareholders are in this for the long haul,” he told IBC attendees this morning. Halton said the lack of penetration so far for Google TV and Apple TV meant that YouView had “not missed the boat”. He pointed out that it was the first online TV platform to be chosen by Now TV from BSkyB and Channel 5’s Milkshake. Halton said that further content news would be announced over the remaining months of the year.

YouView has had a “good start”, with positive reviews and a good and expanding range of content. Halton said that the next phase would be to begin marketing the service in earnest. The platform would develop, and the next functional release of the YouView software is ready to deploy, said Halton. He said apps for companion devices would be developed in tandem with the core platform.

Having key brands in one place, and the integration of the linear and on-demand service was hard to do and gave YouView an advantage over other connected TV platforms and media streamers, said Halton.

Halton said that YouView’s shareholders had a range of priorities and it was important to meet their individual needs. He said the platform, in addition to benefiting the free-to-air broadcasters, offered possibilities for a wide range of new revenue streams, including targeted advertising and new pay revenues.

“For the ISPs, YouView is strategically their TV platform,” said Halton. TalkTalk had already announced its proposition, making YouView boxes available for free to top-tier customers.

YouView will offer instant access to about £3 billion (€3.8 billion) worth of content every year through one simple interface thanks to its backwards-in-time capability, said Halton. “For 70% of Freeview homes in the UK, pause and rewind of live TV is new,” he said. Most users did not have Freeview Plus boxes. He said this functionality would feature significantly in YouView’s marketing campaigns.

Halton said that YouView was now stocked in 800 stores in the UK and both Humax and Huawei had YouView boxes on display at IBC.