Interview: Orange’s mobile TV boss Deborah Tonroe on the operator’s revamped new service

Mobile TV is all the rage, whether it’s watching Corrie on your phone, catching up with X Factor backstage action, or testing whether Big Brother still makes your teeth champ with foaming rage once it’s been shrunk down for a two-inch screen (answer: yes).

Orange was quick off the mark with its mobile TV service, launching it in May last year. But the operator has recently revamped the service to work on more handsets, with new pricing options and fresh channels – including Aardman Animations, the people behind Wallace & Gromit.

To find out more, I talked to Deborah Tonroe, head of TV and video for Orange UK. She explained what’s with the changes, which channels are most popular, and why she doesn’t think the DAB technology used by Virgin Mobile for its mobile TV service isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

What’s with the refresh – what’s new?

The fundamental change we’ve made in the last month is to roll Orange TV onto a new platform, which means it’s now available on 14 different handsets, with new ones coming out all the time.

Before, we were on just three Nokia handsets, so this opens the product up to a lot more new customers. Our ambition is to have it on every 3G handset that we launch, although occasionally you’ll find one that isn’t capable.

Also, users used to have to download an application and install it on their phone to watch Orange TV. This new one runs off the Orange World portal, so you go in, click on TV & Video, choose the packages of content and off you go. You don’t have to do anything technical to get started with the service.

You’ve also introduced some new pricing packages, haven’t you?

Yes, that’s the third main change. We always had a £10 pack which let you watch 20 channels. We still have that, it’s called the Max Pack. But we also have two new packs that cost £5 each. The Mix Pack has nine channels – Kiss, Eurosport, FHM, Aardman Animations, My Movies, ITN News, Channel 4 Mobile, Bravo and Living TV. And then the Music Pack has Smash Hits, Kerrang and Kiss TV.

People can chop and change if they want to: you don’t have to stick to the same pack throughout your contract. And we’ll be launching more packs in the coming months, which I can’t talk about just yet!

We’re also seeing some great new content coming onto the platform. Eurosport is great, and for the industry it’s a good thing to see synchronous live channels going onto mobile. If you’re out and about, live sport is something you don’t want to miss.

And then Aardman Animations have just got into mobile in a big way with their channel. Their content really does lend itself to mobile, as it’s in short bursts and makes you laugh.

What are people watching on Orange TV? What’s popular and what’s not?

There haven’t been too many surprises, as the type of customer using this service tends to be the early adopters on 3G, so it’s a younger audience. Music is very popular, and also news.

It’s fulfilling those two requirements – people are bored and on the move, so they want to be entertained, which is where the music channels come in. And then they want to be informed and have some live content, which the news channels provide. The live element of ITN and CNN have been very popular.

Are the made-for-mobile channels popular, or do people just want to watch the channels they know from regular TV?

To begin with, people are looking for names they know. But look at what Channel 4 have done. Channel 4 is a made-for-mobile service, and it’s got Green Wing and Lost there, programmes that you know. But they know mobile viewers won’t watch an hour of Lost, so they’ve created a different channel for mobile.

That, tied to the brand that people know, drives uptake. People are also taking this as an opportunity to do something new.

One of the frustrating things about mobile TV is that it seems to be just copying the way normal TV works: there’s a schedule, so you have to tune in at a certain time to watch the show that you want. Isn’t that a bit backward-looking?

It’s true that mobile TV has been defined by certain sections of the industry as being an asynchronous stream of what you can get at home. I don’t believe that’s what customers are looking for. They want to be entertained in a quick and easy-to-use fashion.

You might have more time at home to search through a database of programmes to find what you want, but on mobile, the desire to be entertained needs to be a lot faster.

Our role as an operator, and an aggregator of content, is to make that experience as pleasant as possible. We will recommend content for the passive viewer, but we also have our video catalogue of over 5,000 videos to choose from. So it’s a combination of the two that’ll help customers get what they want.

There’s been huge change in the broadcasting industry. Customers now decide what they want to watch, and when they want to watch it. Kids don’t understand the phrase ‘not on’. They’re used to watching what they want, when they want. For mobile, we have to recognise that this revolution is already happening. We can’t look backwards.

Virgin Mobile launched their mobile TV service yesterday, and it uses the DAB technology rather than streaming over 3G like you and the other operators. Why haven’t you gone for that method?

The main limitation is that you have to go out and buy a specific DAB handset to access the service. For us, TV is something you need to be able to provide on a variety of handsets. Customers are still making their buying decision based on this being a communication device, and then think about what extra elements they can add onto that.

It’s quite a tall ask to say to somebody ‘Do you want to buy a TV phone?’. We’d rather take the view that if you want to buy a Nokia or a Motorola, fine, let’s add TV to those handsets.

Also, another problem with DAB is the limitation on the number of channels that you can watch, up to six I think. I think customers are going to be more demanding about the variety of channels. The six channels you want to watch may be different to the six that I want to watch, for example. So those are the two core reasons we didn’t feel it was right to go down the DAB road.

Are we ever going to get more interactivity in mobile TV? For example, the ability to text into programmes, vote and so on?

There’s a real ambition to do that, and it would open up lots of opportunities around advertising and programming. But I’ve yet to see anything that’s worked well enough at this stage, so I don’t know how far away it’s going to be.

It’s not for the lack of ideas from programme-makers, that’s for sure. All these gaming channels and those sorts of companies see mobile TV as an opportunity. But we need the technology that allows you to do two things at once on your handset: watch TV and send a text message into the programme. It’s that, rather than any creative issues, which needs to be solved.

So what’s next for Orange TV?

We’ll still be developing new packages and new content. We’re doing some quite interesting deals with a number of content providers, although I can’t say who just yet.

Are these exclusive deals? Is that a big factor in mobile TV, trying to sign up certain broadcasters or production firms to be only on Orange TV?

Most channels are looking for distribution across all the operators. And to be honest, from what I’ve heard, most operators don’t feel that exclusive channels are something that’s important to the offering.

We’re looking to provide a bundle of services to customers, and to differentiate Orange across the experience, and from the range of services we can offer, rather than from having individual channels exclusively. It’s very difficult to get exclusive channels to work, particularly for the content partners.

Vodafone tried it with Sky. Last Christmas, it was all about ‘Get Sky only on Vodafone Live…’

Yes, well, the term exclusive can also be used when you have a partner but no one else is taking your service. That’s all I’ll say...

(c) PocketPicks

Technorati tags: mobile TV