Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 224)
TUESDAY 29 JUNE 2004
BSKYB
Q220 Mr Doran: So you see Freeview
as a sort of hook?
Mr Freudenstein: Yes; it is a
nursery slope.
Q221 Mr Doran: On Freesat, we know
the BBC were looking at their own idea of a free satellite service.
Are you saying that now you are working together on that?
Mr Freudenstein: No, what I am
saying is that I think the BBC are still looking at their own
service, but we are in discussions with them as well as to how
much support they will give to our service and whether they need
to do their own. One thing to note is our service for £150
you will receive a box, an installation and a card, and the card
allows you to receive all the terrestrial broadcasters: ITV, Channel
4, Channel 5, as well as the correct regional versions of BBC
and ITV and Channel 4. The BBC's service, you would only receive
the BBC channels and other free to air channels, but not ITV,
Channel 4, Channel 5. So I am not quite sure what they think they
are going to achieve out of their service, and that is why we
are talking about working together on our service.
Q222 Mr Doran: Picking up the point
that Chris Bryant made, it is quite obvious to us over the periods
that we have been looking at the various aspects of the industry
that the attacks on the BBC have tempered quite a bit. Is that
because the industry, like yourself, is seeing that there is an
advantage in the size and the capacity of the BBC as potential
partners and pushing broadcasting further and creating new opportunities
in what seems a much more flexible market?
Mr Freudenstein: I would not necessarily
say that. We at Sky think it is better to take an unemotional
approach to this. This is a long process, this review. It is going
to go on for a long time. I think you just need to be analytical,
look at what you want out of this, and being emotional about it
does not help the debate at all. I think there is an acceptance
at Sky that the BBC will continue to exist, will continue presumably
to be a large player and it is just how that all fits into the
landscape that needs to be worked out.
Q223 Chairman: Could I ask you one
final question. At the National Theatre there is a play about
football called "Sing your Heart out for the Lads",
and the central part of the set, there is a huge screen on which
they are showing Sky TV coverage of a football match. Viewing
patterns have changed a great deal, have they not? I talked before,
after something Mr Rhodes said, about the old concept which we
all grew up with of a family sitting in a room watching television
programmes together. We have now reached a very different stage
in many ways, perhaps pioneered by the way that you have promoted
yourselves, in which people watching, say, sporting events on
television do not really want to sit at home and watch it with
a six-pack of beer in the way that they might have done a few
years ago, they want to make it a community event, they want to
share it, and viewing patterns are changing in that way as well,
are they not? So, again, to what extent will that affect the way
in which public sector, public service broadcast . . . To what
extent are our viewing patterns changing in relation to evolving
social patterns?
Mr Freudenstein: On your example,
I think live sport is always something that people have wanted
to watch, often wanted to watch in the community; so the pubs
have always done very well out of live sport; people watching
it together at home has always done quite well, and I am sure
that will continue. I think it is an issue that there is probably
less of the whole family sitting down and watching television
together. The average household has a number of televisions now
and people sometimes tend to watch their own programme in their
own room, and that is probably happening more. I do not know what
the answer is. I do not know what you do about that.
Q224 Chairman: If you do not know,
nobody knows! Gentleman, thank you very much indeed.
Mr Freudenstein: Thank you.
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