Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-191)
MR TIM
JENKS, MR
DANNY CHURCHILL,
MR LAURENCE
HARRISON AND
MR ADRIAN
NORTHOVER-SMITH
15 NOVEMBER 2005
Q180 Mr Yeo: On the basis of your
experience that is a perfectly attainable figure.
Mr Churchill: Yes, that is an
attainable figure.
Q181 Mr Yeo: What about the problem
that you refer to in the memorandum about kit that does not stand
up to the changeover?
Mr Churchill: There is not kit
that is not going to stand up to the changeover on sale in our
stores.
Q182 Mr Yeo: No, but people who have
already got stuff at home and they find, on the point of switchover,
it does not work any more.
Mr Churchill: Anything that is
in the marketplace that is on digital—I am not sure whether
in fact they would not work, but everything that we sell in the
stores at the moment, from £25 to whatever is tested and
it will deliver, after switchover, the service it delivers now.
Q183 Mr Yeo: What about someone who
has got an existing aerial which is working perfectly alright
at the moment?
Mr Churchill: Anybody who buys
digital satellite, 100% of people are quite happy to put a dish
up. When you buy digital anything there are things that you have
to consider; if you want digital communications for your computer
you have to upgrade to broadband, and it is an unfortunate fact
of life that some aerials are going to need to be changed, it
is as simple as that. I do not think we should be so defensive
about it, I think we should be open and very clear with people
about it. Of course there will be the unfortunates and what have
you that we have to address, and whatever we do we are going to
have those, but it is not the issue that people are making it
out to be, the consumers in the main are quite happy to accept
that there are costs associated with improving quality.
Q184 Mr Yeo: And there will not be
a difficulty about a sudden spike in demand for upgrading aerials,
you will be able to cope with that.
Mr Churchill: I will give that
to Tim.
Mr Jenks: Can I just say that
statistically the aerial industry is a nightmare to put your finger
on, and where people's aerials are and where they are pointing.
It is one of the most complex things we have, the United Kingdom's
terrestrial transmitter network is a wonder of the modern world
and people look at it as something special. I alluded earlier
to when we started the on-digital thing, when we knew from figures
coming back for subscription televisions through terrestrial that
there was a 30% aerial replacement rate. We have been going at
that for quite a while now, five years nearly, and we can take
some heart from the Llansteffan-Ferryside trial in the percentages
bandied around, in that there was a community with a certain number
of households that were switched to digital and we found out that
for 20% of that population the household had to do something with
the aerial that was on the chimney or on the wall. That is not
counting co-ax plugs that had been chewed by the dog or whatever
had happened in the household itself, but that was the replacement
figure. With laudable efforts at telling the nation about what
you are alluding to on aerial replacement, if their aerial blows
down next February when the bad weather comes and they are educated
in that we are going digital, we need to be digitally ready, then
we can fit a digitally compatible aerial now and when the storms
hit in the bad weather and eat away at this percentage, which
I reckon is going to be 10% to 15%, if you want a guestimate.
Q185 Mr Yeo: Right. Equipment that
gets returned after it has been purchased that you referred to,
does that point towards any particular problems that might arise
and which might be local to that particular area?
Mr Churchill: It is invariably
no fault found when we get the equipment back. It goes through
tests and we find there is nothing wrong with the equipment, which
does indicate that the customer has either had a problem installing
it, or has had a problem in getting the signal to drive it. We
accept that as a fact of life at the moment because a lot of people
are not able to get a signal, even though they might be within
the postcode-check area that says they should be available; they
might be in a particular area where they cannot get the signal,
in which case we refund them and we give them something else.
Q186 Mr Yeo: Eventually that something
else solves the problem, would it?
Mr Churchill: That something else
would solve the problem, or they will wait until the signal is
available to them and then they will come back to it. That will
disappear as the signal strength is increased, that problem.
Q187 Chairman: Can I come back to
this question of aerials? As I understand it, the households that
currently are unable to obtain Freeview are being assured that
when switchover occurs the strength of the DTT signal will be
increased and therefore suddenly they can get Freeview. However,
that depends on them having a robust enough aerial. Those households
are not going to know if their aerial is robust enough until switchover
begins, and as I understand it the Digital UK plan is that one
channel goes off and then a month later the rest follows. Essentially,
if they discover when the first channel goes off that their aerial
is not good enough, they have got a month in which to get a new
aerial fitted before the whole thing goes off. Are you going to
be able to have enough aerial installers to be able to install
the necessary aerials in that short space of time so that nobody
actually finds they get a blank screen when switch-off occurs?
Mr Jenks: Can I just say this
before I answer that, which is a good political way to start.
I understand technically that the broadcasters will put more detail
on this when they take the stand here, but we are hoping broadcast-wise
to be able to put something in a signal that goes out to warn
people that their aerial might not be up to scratch now. So before
your scenario occurs and we end up at switch day when the switch
gets thrown on BBC 2, for example, we hope that a large percentage
of households will be made aware that they should be doing something
with their aerial before this moment arrives.
Q188 Chairman: But they are analogue
now so how can you do that?
Mr Jenks: I do not know, it is
a technical problem that broadcasters are working on and I think
you are going to hear more about that in evidence to come later
on. It is a broadcast issue, I am not up on all broadcast techniques
and the technicalities as Graham was previously sitting in this
seat, but what I can say is this: if the message was to go out
now on the capacity we have in the aerial industry and the ability
to ramp up from vans that can achieve—I think the average
is 1,300 installs in a year—by simply covering the geographical
distances we know of that can be as high as 2,000 jobs in the
year with a man on a van equipped, there should not be the problem
we think there is going to be. In other words, I think we are
equipped to deal with the problem you describe as long as the
message is out there.
Q189 Chairman: But that depends on
people upgrading their aerials now, before switchover, even though
they are on analogue and cannot get digital.
Mr Jenks: Now we know that the
transmitter rollout is going to be, apart from the main transmitters
relay stations as well, to ensure coverage of public service broadcasting,
and we know where these transmitters are and the type of aerials
that are needed on them. When the plan originally rolled out we
did not quite know where we were going with transmitter coverage
and which transmitters were to be switched, if they were. Now
we know where the aerials are, as aerial installers, and where
they are pointing, it is not rocket science so to speak to say
that if someone asks us for a digitally compatible aerial because
they need to replace it anyway, it has fallen down for whatever
reason, then we can put one up that will be ready. Going back
to your question about would there be a bottleneck if everybody
decided to wait and see what happens, yes, of course there would
be, but we think if we put the plans in place that we have been
working on for a long while now, we avoid that.
Q190 Chairman: It sounds to me as
if you are relying on strong winds to blow down lots of aerials
in advance of switchover.
Mr Jenks: No, but we have more
or less had them every year I can remember being in this industry,
around about January and February and, on a serious note, it is
part of how we operate and manufacture according to the demand
in our industry. For example, we do not ramp up in the middle
of July and August, nobody buys aerials in the summer holidays,
that is just a fact of broadcasting, but we do prepare for an
autumn sales push from the broadcasters over Christmas and then
we prepare again for the February and the March winds. That is
a fact, yes.
Q191 Chairman: It is the case, therefore,
going to all of you, that the 20% plus of the population who cannot
get DTT at the moment should, nevertheless, go out and buy digital
equipment, upgrade their aerials and do all these things a year
or maybe two years in advance of actually being able to benefit
from it, if you want to avoid supply problems in the future.
Mr Northover-Smith: Absolutely.
I would certainly say to any customer living in the Border area
if you cannot get a signal today you should still, absolutely,
buy an integrated digital TV because that TV set will see you
through switchover, it will give you the usability advantages
through switchover, it will give you the environmental advantages
through switchover and, frankly, it is easy to use, you have one
remote control, etc etc. The message from both of us, certainly
from me as a manufacturer and from Tim as an aerial installer,
is that actually, as we have said before, there are nearly 6.4
million people going into the shops every year to buy a TV set.
That replacement cycle is happening anyway, regardless of our
discussions within this room. Tim is also facing the same situation,
where his aerials are getting knocked over in the storms every
single year, and that is also a replacement cycle that is happening
anyway. What we have to do is pull the two together so that those
replacement cycles are selling the right products.
Chairman: We have no more questions,
thank you very much indeed.
|
