Chello Multicanal is a leading channel provider in Spain and Portugal and part of the Chellomedia Group. Earlier this year, Chellomedia acquired Teuve, a group of TV channels previously owned by Spanish cable operator ONO. These have now been integrated into Chello Multicanal.
The man responsible for leading the growth for Chello Multicanal is Managing Director Eduardo Zulueta, who discusses the integration of Teuve into current operations, expansion of its broadcasting reach, brand creation, new revenue streams and increased ownership of content.
VIA SATELLITE: What is the significance of the acquisition of Teuve?
Zulueta: This acquisition allows us to consolidate our position as the leading thematic channel producer in Spain and Portugal. We already were a significant player in the market, but with this acquisition we become a substantial one. We have 17 channels in Spain and four specifically produced in Portugal for the Portuguese market through Dreamia, a joint venture with Zon Multimedia where we have 50 percent equity. As far as audience share is concerned, we have 16 percent of the pay-TV audience share in Spain and 18 percent of pay TV audience share in Portugal.
VIA SATELLITE: What are the major initiatives that Chello Multicanal is working on in terms of content delivery?
Zulueta: We are experimenting with several initiatives to bolster our content on the Web. There is now paid video-on-demand content available online. We have been extremely successful with an iPhone application for our cooking channel, Canal Cocina. That iPhone application has registered 250,000 downloads. It is a free application, but when you consider there are less than 1 million iPhones in Spain, reaching 30 percent of them, higher than the pay-TV penetration in Spain, tells you a lot about the power of the brand of Canal Cocina and also about the need of specific applications designed for new platforms. It is very clever. It is quite handy and practical and a great promotional tool for Canal Cocina.
VIA SATELLITE: If the iPhone application is free, how will you make generate revenue from this initiative?
Zulueta: All of these initiatives are at an experimental stage. We have been very surprised by the rollout of this iPhone application. The best way to monetize it would be to have a pay application, which we didn’t think was right in this first step but it is something we might consider in the future once we have more content available. Another way of monetizing these efforts would be through advertising, but it appears the advertising community is not ready at this stage to value adequately new media. So far they seem reluctant to explore the possibilities of this new world and stay close to the well-trodden path of [gross ratings points] and conventional advertising. So even though we have had a massive response from the consumer in terms of the iPhone application, we have not encountered any excitement on behalf of advertisers.
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