Q&A: Top Up TV's Jim Hytner

Last week saw terrestrial pay TV operator Top Up TV announce a major content deal with Setanta Sports, giving new customers free access to live coverage Barclays Premier League matches. Digital Spy spoke to Top Up TV commercial director Jim Hytner about the deal and what else is on the company's radar.

Could you explain the thinking behind your new deal with Setanta?
"We are a challenger brand media platform and doing quite well, but obviously sport drives a significant amount of subscriptions - so the Setanta deal is a cracker for us. It's the biggest deal in our short history and is there to drive box sales in volume, making it a lot easier to allow people to sample our Anytime service."

Setanta and Top Up TV have a history of working together, such as your joint submission to Ofcom's review of pay TV. Do you have plans to form an even closer relationship with Setanta?
"No, we don't. We had a joint submission because we're both challenger brands and therefore that made sense. There are no further plans for joint activity."

Are you satisfied with Top Up TV's takeup rate?
"We are happy with takeup. We are very ambitious; we believe that our box is becoming more reliable, and each generation of box becomes more superior, so we're becoming more and more confident about our product proposition. We're also upbeat about our content improvements on the Anytime side: we've just signed Warner, with Nip/Tuck and The West Wing, and we're out trying to improve our current offering, so there'll be more news on that in the future.

"On two bases we're quite chipper: one is on the box itself, the other is on the content. Therefore it made sense for us to at this time do a deal as big as the Setanta one because at this point we really feel we can be proud of our box and our content."

How will digital switchover affect your customer acquisition plans?
"We have a digital switchover strategy and we believe that the Setanta deal is a great marketing tool in digital switchover areas. We, like Sky and Virgin, look at the digital switchover areas one-by-one and look at what activity we can execute there. Clearly Sky have got the marketing muscle but this deal will undoubtedly help."

Why do existing customers not get the same deal - 10 months of free Setanta Sports 1 - as new ones?
"Existing customers get Setanta free for three months and then for half price for the rest of the season, at a value of around £80. If you're a new customer, you get ten months free if you take it up now, at a value of around £130 minus a £20 connection charge. So it's a richer deal for new customers, but not by that much. We would love to be able to be a company that offered the same incentives to existing customers to thank them for their loyalty as offered to new customers; the reality is, in this business most of the time there are incentives to bring in new customers that maybe won't be offered on a mirrored basis to existing customers. And I do understand that that is frustrating.

"I would say two things: one is, you only need to look at Sky - I was Sky's marketing director - and one month we'd be offering three months' free Sky Sports, the next month offering six months' free sport, and the next month we'd be offering a season ticket of sport! So the reality is the competition do it, Sky continue to do it, and a lot of companies do it. I don't care what other companies do, I care about our customers, but the reality is we're in a very aggressive, tough and competitive environment, so it's difficult to do it. What we've come up with is something that has similar value, not quite the same value, but gets existing customers around £80 of value versus - if somebody buys a box today - £130 of value minus the connection fee. So there is a slight gap but not as big as the headline figure."

Does the Freesat proposition hurt or help your business model?
"I don't think it affects our business model hugely. I think it's a good offering and it will have its place in the market. We don't see that as being as big a threat as the continuing marketing muscle of Sky. So it's another entry, another brand that is backed by the big boys and therefore it will have a marketing spend that we simply can't afford; but we don't see it as being as big a threat as the ongoing offerings from Sky.

Will the legacy linear pay TV service be switched off, and will the capacity be used to deliver more content on demand?
"I think over time we see a point at which our offering will be a subscription model for video on demand via download. We haven't got a date but over time that's in our sights."