“The fastest digital uptake in world history…”

Foxtel CEO Kim Williams was interviewed recently by the ABC’s Media Report. Full transcript here. Audio here. Edited short bits here:

“We are about the empowerment of consumers to choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. So that we have without question, the best children’s programming in Australia, we have the best documentary programming in Australia, we have seven independent news channels that provide a diversity of opinion and information across the globe for consumers. We have notwithstanding the very strong restrictions on sports rights in Australia, an extraordinarily comprehensive sports service, which unusually in the Australian landscape, plays sport live.

…

“This year was the first year in which Western Australia surpassed Queensland in its selling rates, and I think it’s entirely attributable to the AFL.

…

“One can over-train on sport in dealing with a company like Foxtel. Foxtel enjoys the highest share of viewing in Foxtel homes, in other words in subscription television homes, in the world. For the first 26 weeks of this year, over 60% of the time spent watching television in a Foxtel home, was spent viewing Foxtel. To put that in the context of, for example, British homes, about 45% to 47% of the subscriber’s time is spent watching the subscription television service in that country.

…

“On average we add an extra interactive application to our platform every two weeks.

Once people get the service, they tend to keep it. We have the lowest churn rate in the world.

We achieved the fastest digital uptake in world history, we converted all of our existing customer-base to digital in 33 months, and we have seen compound average growth over the course of the last four years, of more than 10% per annum.”