CALGARY – To the chagrin (but maybe not the surprise) of Canadian broadcasters, Shaw Communications CEO Jim Shaw said Thursday that pushing digital cable is not at the top of the company’s priority list.
During its quarterly conference call with financial analysts to discuss its third quarter results, Shaw was asked why its strategy when it comes to marketing digital cable is so different when compared to Rogers. While Rogers carries just about every channel under the sun and strongly markets digital cable, Shaw has been far more reluctant to add many of the new category two channels and has placed its digital cable marketing (as a single product) clearly on the back burner.
The numbers tell that story. Rogers recently reported in its third quarter results that it has 840,100 digital cable customers and 1.025 million digital terminals in the market. That’s a 37.3% penetration. Shaw, on the other hand, has just 598,400 digital cable customers – 28% penetration – and 739,000 digital set tops in the market.
But, said Shaw Thursday morning, the costs are lower connecting a high speed or telephony customer, and the returns better.
“We get a lot more bang for our dollar when we bring on a Digital Phone customer or a high speed customer or a bundled customer than we do with a digital box customer,” said the CEO.
“If I had to rank them, (digital) would rank the lowest (priority).
“It gets our attention – but only minor attention because the other products get our top attention – with (digital) being kind of a backup.”
Shaw president Peter Bissonnette, however, softened Shaw’s comments a little by adding: “The triple-play is a stronger element for us than is the digital play – and I’m not discounting digital though… We’re more optimistic now on our numbers coming out of the phone side.”
– Greg O’Brien
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