Sky will ‘remain home of sport’
Sky Television’s new boss, Martin Stewart, is promising more locally-produced shows such as sports documentaries and sports news as he seeks to revive the fortunes of the pay-TV giant.
Sky could also produce other entertainment down the track, he says, but sports will be the initial focus. ‘‘I am keen we deliver services that support the main heritage of Sky which for me is Sky Sport. I think it will continue to be the biggest pillar of our organisation.
‘‘Sky Sport was and needs to continue to be the ‘home of sport’ and that is it,’’ he says defiantly.
A revamp of Sky’s free-to-air channel Prime is on the cards, with hints that will also put sport more front and centre.
Stewart, a 55-year-old Briton who was previous running payTV company OSN in Dubai, was named as Sky’s new boss in November and arrived in New Zealand in late January.
It takes a special kind of confidence to swap continents and take up of the invitation of trying to breathe confidence back into a corporation that has taken as much of a battering as Sky TV.
Perhaps the closest comparison is when Scotsman Paul Reynolds breezed into the country to head the then-unloved Telecom business 12 years ago to begin what proved a stormy five-year stint. Like Reynolds, Stewart has Glaswegian heritage through his parents, though his accent is from Dorset and London where he was born and grew up. His resume includes chief financial officer of Sky’s British equivalent, BSkyB, between 1996 and 2004.
And like Reynolds, he is being touted as a ‘‘transformational’’ chief executive who could take the business to places that the old guard could or would not go.
Sky used the ‘‘transformation’’ word four times in the media release originally announcing Stewart’s appointment.
Insiders suggested at the time that was a clear signal that the company’s board had decided to embark on a bolder strategy that would involve faster change.
But Stewart spent his first three weeks in New Zealand touring the country with his daughter and listening to the people he met, rather than getting his feet straight under the desk and prescribing solutions.
Stewart said he asked a lot of people about Sky during his travels. ‘‘I didn’t tell them what job I was doing. The good thing is pretty much everybody I met was either a customer or a former customer.’’ Their views were not a surprise, he says. ‘‘People would like more flexibility, more choice and they have a sense that maybe the value equation has got out of kilter. We have to try harder to demonstrate why we are a premium service.
‘‘If we want to carry on charging a premium price, we have to do more to add value to the experience and the content and that is what we are focused on.’’ Hence the new productions. ‘‘There will be changes on screen. People will see a richer, more immersive experience.
‘‘They will see more support programming.’’ Sky had already kicked off a few sport documentaries, he said. ‘‘You will see them in a couple of months.
‘‘People are hungry for things like sports news. If we are going to look at ‘news’ it is going to be on the sports side rather than a general news service.
‘‘We clearly have to appeal to younger audiences more ... That means different presentational styles, the different use of statistics and graphics.
‘‘That will be backed up by a commitment to get our content into the hands of Kiwis in any way that they want. We need to change and that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody.’’
The company plans to make it easier for people to watch Sky on more platforms, perhaps by allowing customers with internetonly access to Sky to put it on the big screen, Stewart says.
But it also plans to get its MySky boxes – which let people pause and record Sky – into the hands of more of its satellite customers. ‘‘It has a fantastic set of features and we need to get that into people’s hands more broadly,’’ he says.
Since Stewart was named as the company’s boss, the headwinds facing Sky have grown only stronger. Its share price has fallen another 40 per cent in those four months, and Sky was last month forced to announce a ‘‘disappointing’’ delay bringing to market a new generation of set-top boxes.