DStv isn’t going anywhere
Satellite TV won’t disappear anytime soon, DStv Digital Media group general manager Graeme Cumming said at a recent media event.
Cumming said that although they believe streaming video is the future, and that DStv is getting ready for that future, broadcast TV is still a great technology.
A satellite broadcast is by far the more efficient way to deliver video than over the Internet. However, the world is moving to streaming, so that’s what DStv must plan for, he said.
He also believes that pay-TV provides the superior business model.
“History will show us that pay TV is the better business model,” said Cumming.
There’s no question that video streaming is what people want, but whether it’s a better business, whether there’s more margin in it, and whether it’s sustainable is the argument, he said.
He said the problem with streaming video is that it not only faces the high capital costs of buying and producing content, but high variable costs too.
Bandwidth is one of these escalating operational costs, said Cumming. The more content you deliver to subscribers, the more you pay.
For consumers, the move to disparate streaming video services may also present an inconvenience, said Cumming.
Where before you might be able to get all your video entertainment through one service on one box, with streaming services it is spread across multiple apps potentially on multiple boxes.
This challenge also presents a new opportunity, in terms of how the services will be aggregated.
There is opportunity for someone to offer all the services people want through a single interface with unified search and content discovery, and without having to subscribe to each service separately.
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