Comreg survey - Saorview/Subscription/FTA penetration

Apogee

Full report here:
http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg1346.pdf

mike65

That Freesat (now is that actual Freesat or FTA?) has 6% of the market with zero marketing in ROI beyond the few places that stock the boxes is pretty impressive.

Alun

At least it's a comfort to know that Comreg don't waste taxpayer's money paying people to check their spelling or grammar :rolleyes:

watty

No surprises on that. It shows how pay TV has become a "must have" automatic purchase rather than people researching, because historically it was the only way to get the main UK channels, over 30% of Irish analogue reception was rubbish, TG4 wasn't available to about 10% of people that really wanted it and TV3 refused to pay for the coverage their licence demanded! Only 80% TV3 coverage and about 20% of that poor signal.

If the Irish consumer was more clued in and ASAI made UPC & Sky state clearly that over 90% of what their subscribers watch is FREE without a subscription. They should be made to clearly differentiate Free and Pay only channels on their adverts.

Really Saorview & Freesat ought to be 40% +

Also badly installed aerials etc due to fact until recently there was no Irish organisation setting or overseeing Aerial standards. The Saorview rollout actually hurt that initiative rather than RTENL taking the opportunity to support a single professional body. There is no sense at all in more than one.

St Senan

watty wrote: »

Also badly installed aerials etc due to fact until recently there was no Irish organisation setting or overseeing Aerial standards. The Saorview rollout actually hurt that initiative rather than RTENL taking the opportunity to support a single professional body. There is no sense at all in more than one.

here here +1

mickko

Interesting how the company that enjoys no regulation here has 53% of the market place.

ardmacha

They should really have some sort of measure of terrestrial UK service also. If you get a range of stations from Divis, Freesat or Sky is less needed in those areas.

I'd say a fair few Sky customer get little enough added value for their subscription.

Prof Nincom Poop Ph.D

watty wrote: »

If the Irish consumer was more clued in and ASAI made UPC & Sky state clearly that over 90% of what their subscribers watch is FREE without a subscription. They should be made to clearly differentiate Free and Pay only channels on their adverts.

Where you get that? Couldn't be right. Free ones have nothing on them, except for maybe Film4, E4, More4.

Is this based on a questionnaire or from ratings? Though can't go by ratings either, I remember reading years back, RTE changed the company they were using to calculate numbers watching different shows. They ended up with several new shows in the Top Ten with the new company ratings.

If you like the American Drama shows, they are not on the Free ones?

Hotblack Desiato

4% share for Saorview among city dwellers???

I live in a Dublin suburb, I would say about 20% of the houses in my immediate area have UHF aerials installed in the last 2 years. A few years back you would never have seen an aerial around here, it was all Sky and UPC.

It's a very strong Saorview signal area so there could well be more houses with indoor and loft aerials (I use a loft aerial with quite a long cable run, passive splitter feeding 2 TVs, and the signal strength is always over 95% for both.)

watty

The 4% Saorview likely means counting people with NO UPC or Sky,

UPC users are less likely to use an aerial also. Sky Subscribers may use an aerial on other TVs or also on the TV with a Sky Box.

zg3409

ninja900 wrote: »

4% share for Saorview among city dwellers???

I live in a Dublin suburb, I would say about 20% of the houses in my immediate area have UHF aerials installed in the last 2 years. A few years back you would never have seen an aerial around here, it was all Sky and UPC.

Definitely a lot more UHF aerials, even on a house with a UPC van parked outside. A lot of houses have a new UHF aerial mounted beside a new "sky" type dish, indicating to me probably a combo box installed. This is in a UPC "fibre" area.

I would say out of 90 houses in my estate at least 10 have Saorview and satellite, 20 or 30 have Sky and the rest UPC. Some UHF installs are defintely DIY as the aerials point totally the wrong direction.

10 years ago there was probably only one or two of the 90 using free only.

Schorpio

Yeah, the Saorview statistics strike me as a bit dubious alright. I'm guessing that a lot of people who have Sky/UPC also have Saorview on a second television and they may not think to include it when questioned about their tv provider.

icdg

Schorpio wrote: »

. I'm guessing that a lot of people who have Sky/UPC also have Saorview on a second television and they may not think to include it when questioned about their tv provider.

Maybe for Sky. In my experience, UPC viewers tend to have UPC analogue as their service on kitchen set portables, especially since ASO.

The high level of UPC subscriptions in city areas shouldn't be a surprise - in the 1990s Cablelink enjoyed take up over 85% of homes passed. Nonetheless, Sky's share is impressive given that it had very few subscribers in urban areas prior to 2002.

STB

......a grain of salt.


Some huge anomalies here. Not knowing the ins and outs of this survey or whether its based upon figures supplied by subscription companies an educated guess is that someone did use so called sub numbers which are warped by people constantly resigning for a better deal or punters answering a door to door question simply saying Sky but not having a current subscription and actually viewing FTA satellite. How many people refer to satellite reception as Sky, regardless of not subscribing ? The answer is loads.

Also the question that never goes away. Why do people continue to pay sub companies like Sky, when 9 out of 10 the most watched channels are free to air. Nothing has changed in the last 10 years if you go by Nielsens ratings and one things for certain, thats what the advertisers use. They dont care how it is delivered.