Hot off the press last quarter was the announcement of a new free to air TV service, Freely. It gives British viewers the ability to easily browse and watch live TV straight from their internet connected Smart TVs. But what does it mean for the future of aerial TV?
Together TV’s Head of Marketing, Francesca Aita, sat down with Freeview’s Marketing Director, Owen Jenkinson, to ‘spill the T’ on how this will impact the future of traditional TV and secure the future of public service broadcasters like Together TV and the BBC, but also the inside scoop on what it’s like to work at Freeview – a company with a staggeringly low staff turnover.
Francesca: First of all, how did you get into your current position of Marketing Director at Freeview?
Owen: It’s a story of serendipity if I’m honest. Prior to this I was at Channel 4 for about two or three years helping to launch 4oD [their on-demand service]. And then I did a brief stint at PlayStation, launching a video-on-demand service for them.
But then there was the financial crash and in 2009, I was made redundant overnight along with, I think, 6,000 people at Sony across the world. No one was hiring. I’d never had that experience before where the financial system was melting down and most people were shedding their staff left, right and centre.
If I’m brutally honest, this Freeview role was the first one that came along. But I love it here! I hadn’t really thought of how interesting, motivating and important the public service broadcasting mission is. Probably because I remember growing up with my parents, who almost thought “TV is evil.” They don't watch telly at all and they didn't see TV as a powerful good necessarily.
I believe in the mission of entertainment, education, all the good things that TV can do and in the case of Together TV, bringing communities together. To stay somewhere for as long as I have, you have to believe in it. Otherwise, what are you there for? The other reason why I've ended up staying here so long is there’s a really great bunch of people here.
Francesca: What skills have you leveraged to be successful in your current role?
Owen: Well, there’s some technical aspects around marketing and branding, which might sound a bit crass, but there are some people I've come across in this industry who really just don't get it. They think it's about making TV ads but really, it's role is to affect behaviours.
Beyond that I like spending time with people. This is a people industry and we have to operate in partnership because, whilst we're big in footprint, we're not a Sky or a Netflix. We don't have those resources. We have to demonstrate to our supply chain manufacturers, retailers, content providers that working with us is mutually advantageous.
Francesca: What has been the highlight of your career so far?
Owen: Wow, I’m going to have to pick a couple because I’m greedy. There are two significant launches here at Freeview. The first was Freeview HD in 2009. It was the world’s first domestic TV platform that launched free HD channels and a big technical feat. Whilst I'm not particularly technical myself, I got a really good inside track on what the BBC had to do to be able to transmit and compress files and broadcast them across the DTT network, which was an extraordinary piece of engineering. It was a very successful launch for us because we had specific criteria that we were looking for from a marketing perspective: where people are in the service, how they can get it, and how we're able to influence the volume of devices that were sold.
And then in 2015, we launched Freeview Play, which was a connected TV service. A little bit late to the party but that was for all sorts of unusual reasons to do with our shareholders who at the time were thinking that YouView would be their response to the need for a hybrid TV solution. It didn't quite work out. So, they came back cap-in-hand and said, “Actually, Freeview is quite a strong brand people have heard of it. How would you bring this thing to market?” Because it came to market in quite a different way to YouView. So yeah, those two launches were significant. Millions of people use those services today and they're not just niche.
Francesca: Absolutely, and they are technology based which is a challenge in itself.
Owen: Yeah and from a communication perspective, just getting people to understand what this technology does It’s not that complicated, but it is a shift from what people thought of Freeview to be, which was a cheap box that sat on their telly that they needed to buy to go through the [digital] switch over.
Another success, from a personal point of view, was doing a master’s degree related to behavioural science. I really enjoyed that. I found it very rewarding and allowed me to occasionally lecture at university on advertising psychology. And I’ve got to meet some very interesting people in the behavioural science space.
Francesca: How do you think Freeview, Freesat and the new service Freely will serve the changing audiences’ needs of digital and streaming?
Owen: In my view, there will be a mixed ecology for the next few years where those three services will coexist as they serve slightly different audiences with different needs. The advent of Freely is very much about transitioning to a streaming generation. A time will come when device manufacturers will stop making Freeview Play devices. I can't tell you when because I don't know. And then the service will exist until the switch-off of TV over aerials.
Freely is the future. But for the foreseeable future, Freesat/Freeview will still exist. Because 18 million households rely on Freeview and they're not going to suddenly all switch-off. But clearly, we have to be cognizant of a fairly large cohort of viewers who are not plugging in aerials anymore. We need something to provide to them.
Francesca: And what are your thoughts on the government not wanting to leave behind the older cohorts?
Owen: We still need to be able to provide a service for them and Freeview Play will exist for as long as the government allows aerial transmissions. I expect that will be a good decade and we’re not going to suddenly switch the Freeview service off. It’s going to exist side-by-side with Freely. But there will come a moment in a few years when perhaps more people are buying Freely devices to enable a long-term transition to it.
My expectation is that government money will be needed to provide assistance for older and harder to reach audiences who might need technical help or even devices.
This is not about trying to accelerate change, it’s about reacting to how certain cohorts are watching TV and making sure that people like yourselves, the BBC or other public service broadcasters still have a way of accessing younger audiences who are fragmenting and disappearing off and it’ll be a slow transition to ensure everyone is looked after.
Francesca: In this context, what do you think of the role that Together TV plays in the media ecology?
Owen: Together TV is unique and it does what it says on the tin. It’s clearly directed at the community and serves a completely unique role and an admirable one. When looking at television as a force of good, it should be encouraged and supported to demonstrate that media is vibrant, alive, serving all sorts of different audience groups not just sports fans or those who want to watch the latest shiny show on Netflix. It’s a force of good, a successful version of what we tried to achieve with local TV.
Francesca: Good point - local TV was based on geographic proximity, whilst Together TV is a UK-wide channel. So rather than proximity-based communities, it’s interest-based communities.
Owen: And I can see a role for both. Local newspapers in the olden times were very successful. But I think interest-based feels more appropriate for TV media. I can see how if you want to connect specifically with your community, you might promote services that are very local to you, so that media would be appropriate. But TV feels a bit different, and more interest based. I know when I worked for Channel 4, they did audience segmentation. They didn’t really care too much about demographics it was literally “these are home fans” or whatever. So, I can see how it just works in this medium.
Francesca: You’ve been on Together TV’s media advisory board since 2020. Why did you take on this role on top of your busy role?
Owen: I remember having a chat with Alex [Kann, Together TV’s Chief Executive] and was just intrigued about his approach to working in television. It was quite unusual in that it is very academic, and I quite like academia. I had the feeling that it would be interesting and theoretical as well as practical. As simple as that: an intellectual challenge!
Francesca: My pass-it-on question from the previous guest is – can you talk about a time when your resilience was most tested and what did you learn about yourself during that period?
Owen: There’ve been times over the years that I’ve learnt from working with creative advertising agencies when they’re just not getting it.
I’ve learnt to be 100% sure that you’re communicating the same message because often it’s not that they’re not getting it, they have misread, or you’ve not communicated well enough to them.
I used to work in advertising agencies and you get a client brief in a certain way. Then, when you get back to them and they might say, “Ah well that’s not what I want. You’ve misunderstood the brief.” It’s only when you start having a proper dialogue with them you realise, the agency didn’t misunderstand the brief, it was not very well communicated in the first place or different people around it were saying slightly different things and throwing them off track.
Clarity and consistency are important to avoid throwing a spanner in the works and wasting months coming up with ideas that are never going to work. I had to regroup with my team and patch things up because tempers can get frayed. And I then went to see the chief executive at the ad agency and explained what’s going on, getting them altogether and working through it.
Francesca: What is your best piece of professional advice?
Owen: It’s going to sound totally egocentric but try to understand yourself. I’ve done a lot of things like psychographic testing, psychometric testing, looking at my personality traits, my strengths…it is to learn how you can best communicate and integrate with other people because you’ll go “That’s exactly like me! That’s why I do this! That’s why I get frustrated!” And when you know that, then you can understand yourself really well. It was a useful journey and I would recommend it to anyone.
I’m also not one of those people who needs a plan of what I’m going to be doing in 5-10 years time, so that’s some non-advice. If you understand yourself, the rest will fall into play. You’ll end up making mistakes and that’s fine. I’ve been here 14 years, and I can’t imagine that when I joined here that it would’ve been my plan.
Finally, get out and talk to people. Connection is super important in our industry, and you’ll be amazed what you can learn. I’m reasonably extroverted but even those who are introverted, once they go and do it, they just feel so good to have made real connections that will be useful in the future.
Enjoyed this? You can also read Paul Amadi MBE's, Chief Supporter Officer at British Red Cross, thoughts the impact of the broadcasting industry on the charity sector or discover the bold happenings at Channel 4 with their Head of Media, Jennifer Carey.
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