YouView loses chief executive to TalkTalk
Susie Buckridge is to leave the company to take up a new role as head of product services at TalkTalk.
https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2022/02/10/youview-loses-chief-executive-to-talktalk/
https://www.business-live.co.uk/enterprise/yourview-boss-quits-take-senior-23051771
"Susie’s experience at YouView and at the BBC cements our commitment to offering UK consumers simple affordable content streamed via super-fast Full Fibre Connectivity."
https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2022/02/10/youview-loses-chief-executive-to-talktalk/
https://www.business-live.co.uk/enterprise/yourview-boss-quits-take-senior-23051771
"Susie’s experience at YouView and at the BBC cements our commitment to offering UK consumers simple affordable content streamed via super-fast Full Fibre Connectivity."
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Blow for BBC's battle against streaming as boss of YouView quits
Set top box company is key to TV's fight with likes of Netflix
A British broadcasting venture that has helped defend the BBC from the rise of Netflix has been left rudderless after its chief executive was poached by a major shareholder.
Susie Buckridge is understood to be leaving YouView to take up a new role as head of product services at the budget broadband provider TalkTalk.
It is the latest bout of turbulence to strike the internet-based TV service, which is backed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, TalkTalk and BT.
The business offers set-top boxes that can record and rewind shows as well as displaying terrestrial channels, catch-up players and paid-for TV services such as BT Sport, and is seen as a crucial player in the fight against deep-pocketed US streaming services such as Disney and Netflix.
YouView has grappled with launch delays, boardroom bust-ups and wrangles over shareholder funding in the decade since it was created to support the future of UK broadcasting.
Arqiva dealt a blow to the service last year when the television mast monopoly pulled its investment from both YouView and Freeview, the main terrestrial broadcasting service.
The Telegraph understands that a new shareholder agreement has since been signed that has kept all six remaining investors on board.
Ms Buckridge has spent 12 years at YouView after joining the business from her role as head of strategy at the BBC.
The move will reunite her with Sir Charles Dunstone, the founder of TalkTalk who completed a stint as chairman of YouView in 2013 when Lord Alan Sugar quit the role following a boardroom row with the then Channel 5 owner Richard Desmond.
Lord Sugar was paid £500,000 a year to chair the business but left shortly after Mr Desmond allegedly taunted the BBC Apprentice star, shouting "you're fired!" during an executive meeting.
BT and TalkTalk have shouldered a greater share of the funding commitment for YouView in recent years after successfully using the service to burnish their pay TV ambitions.
YouView's revenues were flat at around £8.7m for the year to the end of March, while losses narrowed from £18.9m to £18.4m over the period.
Oh, wait……
really??
A one-off flat fee to get that box under TV’s regardless of the source.
Youview parsay is now just BT'S plaything, amazing bbc itv etc still contribute to it's existence as what exactly does youview actually bring to the retail terrestrial market that is of any benefit?
Which means that although we non-BTTV users only get the crumbs from the table, at least there still is a table. Because if there wasn’t - if YouView went under - our orphaned boxes wouldn’t just carry on regardless, like my DigitalStream PVR has, despite DigitalStream’s demise; they would stop.
@DJHB1980 though, is wishing for a ship that sailed a long time ago; the ‘best bits’ of Virgin and Sky are content, not technical facilities, and BT has already seized on the Sky content issue by betting the woodlands next to the farm on Now, thus securing that side of things as well; and even now, sewing up Sports a bit further than that.
And yes, throw in Freesat, so the boxes run out at about 8 times the price of a Stick that can do 90% of what the box can do, instead of about 5 times.
Finally, I wonder what BT think of Sky Glass; sorry that’s an initiative they missed, or watching with a wry smile because they looked at the idea of an actual BT TV, but decided against it?
Sky Glass, of course, has shot itself in the foot with its nearly-but-not-quite ‘recording’ facility; shame they didn’t, or couldn’t, take a leaf out of Apple’s book, where all your ‘recordings’ of popular stuff were actually Apple serving you its copies, and only your weird and obscure stuff was actually your recordings. Instead, Sky Glass can just serve you the popular stuff; so better than the catchup services where stuff expires, but still not quite the personal recording service you get from a hard disc.
It seems we are always on the cusp of not needing our own hard discs any more, but we never quite get there. Or not yet, anyway. But one day, a zapper box may finally be all we need. And when that day comes, BT will be as well equipped to meet it as they are to meet our HDD requirements now.
Just so long as they keep YouView on life support….
Well, they aren’t really, as the partners are no longer putting in equal shares, even before BT ponies up to preserve YouView as a going concern, which it otherwise wouldn’t be.
But I’m sure ITV etc. know exactly how much of their linear programming, and their catchup, is being consumed on YouView boxes and TVs with YouView on them, and can figure out what that’s worth to them.
The company's announcement is here:
https://www.talktalkgroup.com/article/talktalkgroup/2022/general-manager-group-product-Susie-Buckridge
In it Susie Buckridge says: “TalkTalk has always been innovative and challenged the status quo. As we move to a Full Fibre and Smart Home world, TalkTalk is uniquely free to offer the great products and offerings that will transform our connected lives. I look forward to joining the team.”
It seems to me that perhaps TalkTalk have some plans that might surprise us.