THE INVITATIONS are in the post. UPC has this week sent information on its new on-demand television service to 200,000 customers, inviting them to sit back on their sofas with a bowl of popcorn, press the “on demand” button on their remote controls and not emerge from their living rooms until winter.
Some 160,000 UPC households in Dublin with the correct set-top box will be able to access RTÉ Player, 3 Player and a range of on-demand content automatically from tomorrow as, what UPC chief executive Dana Strong called, “true on-demand” arrives in Ireland.
This is a big deal for all kinds of reasons. It throws down a competitive gauntlet to the dominant digital television provider, Sky. It may well kill off DVD rental businesses from Xtravision to Screenclick. It makes life very difficult for Netflix. And it could see the volume of pre-roll video advertising on catch-up services mushroom in a manner that is rather attractive for RTÉ and TV3 – TG4’s player will be added later in the summer, when the service will be rolled out to at least 244,000 UPC customers across the State.
Some customers with an older generation of set-top box will need to pay €30 to upgrade if they want to access the free seven-day catch-up services. The on-demand television library, which includes complete seasons of shows from Doctor Who to Nurse Jackie, is free to customers of UPC’s Select and Max packages, while movies cost between €1.99 and €5.99.
UPC’s advertising campaign, fronted by presenter Craig Doyle, will be refreshed to put the company’s on-demand offering front and centre. Triggering fresh waves of package upgrades and take-up of bundled services will be part of UPC’s ambition, as will imploring Sky homes to defect to UPC (in areas where UPC’s fibre network is available).
In total, UPC is targeting 660,000 homes. But in the first instance, the advertising campaign will be about “fostering advocacy in our customer base”, says Mark Coan, marketing and sales director for UPC Ireland. That means spreading the word about how great it is having access to “€2,500 worth of box sets”.
“It’s about repeating the trick that we did successfully against Eircom, against Sky,” he says.
Expect Sky to respond soon.
