Microsoft TV Catch Up Player Streams 170,000 Shows During First Days
The new TV Online player launched by Microsoft has had an impressive launch. Showing close to 170,000 views of popular TV shows including Shameless, Peep Show and The Young Ones during its first 11 days since the launch.
Released to the UK market on August 3rd, the MSN Video Player on 3rd August. The launch was railroaded through after the demise of Project Kangaroo by competition regulators during February 2009.
The viewing figures released by MediaGuardian.co.uk, reveals that during the first eleven days up until 14th August, there had been 167,487 views of shows and the online tv and video site had attracted around 154,841 viewers.
Most popular shows on view currently are Derren Brown: Trick of the Mind, How to Look Good Naked, Peep Show, That Mitchell and Webb Look and The Young Ones.
Ashley Highfield, the managing director of consumer and online at Microsoft UK, described these as promising figures – especially as MSN Video Player offers archive programming, not a catchup service of the kind already proven to be a winner with consumers.
“We are very happy with the first numbers – it is a very encouraging start,” he said.
“There is still a strong feeling in the market that, whilst catchup TV works, no one wants older programmes. One motivation behind the MSN Video pilot is to see the demand for programmes outside the catchup TV window.”
When the BBC iPlayer moved from a test phase download model to a streaming service on 13 December 2007, the BBC managed 359,000 streams and downloads of shows in its first week. Over the first two weeks, to December 26, which included traffic built by a marketing campaign, the iPlayer managed close to 850,000 streams and downloads of shows.
When itv.com relaunched as a full streaming service in August 2007 it attracted 1.2m views of TV shows across the whole of the third quarter that year, according to figures from Screen Digest.
Demand Five, Channel Five’s new streaming TV service that launched in June last year, managed 1.21m streams of TV shows in the third quarter last year.
Micosoft is currently running fewer ads on its online TV service than the main UK commercial broadcasters, according to Screen Digest.
Demand Five and Channel 4’s 4oD are carrying twice as many ads. The Itv online video player “is approaching broadcast level” in ad inventory. Ad revenue from itv.com helped the broadcaster to double its overall online revenues to £10m in the first six months of the year.
Microsoft is hoping that its pilot service, with content from BBC Worldwide and All3Media, may establish it as the online TV aggregator of choice for commercial broadcasters. The transmission firm Arqiva, which bought the remnants of Project Kangaroo, is aiming to launch its own service in the coming months.
Microsoft are also hoping to get a good market position in the catch up tv market before the UK launch of the hugely successful Hulu, the US online TV service backed by NBC Universal, News Corporation and Disney.
Its good news for the ultra competative UK Online TV market as competition and choice starts hotting up.
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