I’m getting mixed signals from Emma Scott. Short and gamine, dressed in tight,
head-to-foot black set off by ruby-red lipstick, she looks like a mime
artist but talks like a very blunt sales boss, then recoils when I ask her
the obvious question – just whose customers is her business going to be
targeting?
“You’re obsessed with us gobbling up other people’s customers,” she shrieks.
Well, we’re a business section and we tend to think competitively. She pulls
a face and then laughs.
Scratch that idea of her as a mime artist. I think Scott - a protégé of former
BBC boss Greg Dyke - is actually engaged in a tightrope act. As boss of
Freesat, the BBC/ITV joint venture launched last year, she could have quite
a few rivals in her sights. But she is clearly treading carefully.
And that, I’d guess, is a little bit out of character. Scott, 40, is a ball of
energy with an infectious giggle who has already made her name setting up
Freeview, the digital terrestrial TV service backed by the BBC, among
others. Now she’s been given Freesat, a free-to-air satellite service
covering the 27% of Britain Freeview couldn’t reach, and rather more.
It’s actually available to all, at the cost of a dish and digital set-top box,
and offers 146 free channels, including the mainstream BBC and ITV staples
and High Definition (HD) services that others charge for. From this summer
it will also offer the BBC iPlayer, via a broadband connection. All of which
makes it a game-changer for its pay-TV rivals.
As of now, Freesat is hardly high profile, but then the BBC and ITV have yet
to put their full marketing weight behind it. If it’s any thing like
Freeview, one minute you’ll never have heard of it, and the next, everyone
could have it.
“Yeah, it’s based on what I learnt last time round launching Freeview,” says
Scott coolly, sitting in Freesat’s offices off London’s Oxford Street. Then
her eyes glint. “My job is about acquiring and retaining as many viewers as
possible.”
You would imagine that Sky (39% owned by News Corp, publisher of The Sunday
Times) and Virgin Media, who had HD to themselves before Freesat, are
watching carefully. Is this the BBC muddying a commercial market again?
Heaven forbid. “No, if you want a subscription service you go to a
subscription-service provider,” says Scott. “And stuff like football will be
the driver of that. But if you want free movie channels, or music, or . . .”
In short, there is room for everyone. All the TV services will do well in a
recession, she says, as research shows people cocoon at home. Freesat just
gives viewers more options.
Too many, you could say. You can now get television in so many different ways
it hurts your head. Terrestrial analogue, terrestrial digital, satellite,
cable, broadband, for free, by subscription.
One of Scott’s tasks in selling Freesat will be to cut through this clutter.
Terrestrial analogue is being switched off across Britain, region by region,
up until 2012. By then Scott expects Freesat to have a user-base in the “low
millions”.
It may get even more. It has sold 250,000 Freesat boxes since last May, but an
Easter advertising campaign will soon increase that. For viewers with
HD-ready TVs it’s already a more attractive service than Freeview, which
won’t carry HD channels till after 2012, and even then fewer than Freesat.
So she’s competing with her old outfit? “Nah,” she says, veering into estuary
English. “It’s more a case of looking at it as a whole. If you’re out of
Freeview’s reach, or want HD or iPlayer, get Freesat. But it’s not our
intention to get into 9m homes or anything.”
Scott’s verve is infectious. Educated at Hatfield Comprehensive and Hull
University, and with five years working in Australian telecoms on her CV,
she is - as she likes to point out - rather different to the Oxbridge clique
that habitually fills the BBC’s top echelons.
That won her the nod from Dyke, director-general from 2000 to 2004. He
describes her as a manager “who simply gets things done, highly organised,
and very effective”. She advised him and his predecessor, John Birt, after
being hired for the BBC’s strategy team by Ed Richards, now head of Ofcom.
Before Australia, she had worked as a researcher for the Grimsby MP Austin
Mitchell. Her background is anything but programme-making.
At Freesat, where she has been since 2006, she is allowed to follow her
commercial instincts: collect channels for broadcast, select manufacturers
for equipment, and market the proposition. Prices start at £45 for a basic
Freesat set-top box and run up to £299 for Freesat-plus, which offers the
same hard-drive tricks as Sky-plus and Virgin-plus. Dish and installation
should cost less than £100. Some 3m homes currently have dishes and don’t
use them, says Scott.
Her challenge is to make money and return to Freesat’s backers the cash they
put in: £6m a year. Others might suggest her operation, which is part public
service, lacks commercial bite - she denies it.
“This is a commercial business, I charge terms to come on our electronic
programme guide - £30,000 per channel. We run the tech infrastructure, we
expect to increase income from other sources over time.”
How? “Mostly by charging more people for coming on, and other opportunities.”
These may eventually include pay-TV services, but they are not essential.
Nor is she providing broadband. “It’s not cost-efficient to supply broadband
by satellite and we are not in the broadband business. We are just saying if
you have a broadband connection you can use it to connect to Freesat and
watch iPlayer.”
She does agree, though, that free HD will be a key driver. “It looks amazing,”
she says, “and our research shows something like a third of viewers watch
more programming once they see it in HD. It’s an evolution in quality, like
going from black and white to colour.”
Old TV hands suggest the real challenges facing her are twofold: dealing with
the internal politics of her two owners - BBC and ITV - and getting the
regional marketing push to sell Freesat against rivals like Sky and Virgin
Media as analogue is gradually switched off.
The great unspoken question is whether Freesat is going to target Sky’s
satellite customers aggressively as the recession bites. Sky was a founding
member of the Freeview consortium. It will feel less generous about Freesat.
Will the BBC want to run campaigns against commercial rivals? The response
from Sky and Virgin Media, which already supply free as well as subscription
services, will simply be: why does the BBC need to fund Freesat in the first
place?
Because, says Scott, if people have paid a licence fee and can’t receive
Freeview, they are in danger of paying twice via subscription services. “And
anyway, Sky doesn’t make a big deal of its free offering. You have to wade
through all the pay channels to find them.”
But it’s sensitive stuff. ITV may find it difficult to start a marketing war
for different reasons. It’s strapped for cash. Might it not even consider
selling its stake?
“Nah, they have a commitment,” says Scott. “It reinforces the value of their
channels.”
Freesat’s chairman, Carolyn Fairbairn, who is also ITV’s director of group
development, backs that up. “Freesat will make money for ITV by increasing
the number of free-to-air homes receiving our advertising.”
All of which suggests the usually gung-ho Scott has good reasons for her
softly-softly approach. If she’s too aggressive, others might cry foul. But
she doesn’t look the sort who will be happy fighting with one hand tied
behind her back.
Fairbairn, previously director of strategy at the BBC, who worked with Scott
on the Freeview launch, says the priority will be establishing the quality
of the service.
“Emma’s running a platform in a fast-changing environment. It’s got to stay
current and innovative, and competitors are constantly moving the goalposts.”
Scott will live with the off-stage politics – she’s used to it from the BBC.
It also infused her upbringing.
Her mother, a college lecturer, was a Labour councillor, while her father, a
geophysicist, worked for big oil companies. She describes her home-town,
Hatfield, as a place she “always wanted to leave”.
The key period in her early career was that five-year stint in Australia,
working for the telecoms firm Optus. “I learnt so much in terms of strategy
and business analysis, and the Aussie culture – just get on with it, no fuss
– taught me a hell of a lot about how to operate.”
She took that into the BBC where she rose to become Dyke’s fixer, handling a
variety of projects. He sent her to Hull to set up BBC North and put her in
charge of the licence application for Freeview. Dyke remains a fan. “There
are people who talk and people who deliver – she delivers,” he says.
Scott describes Dyke as a formative influence. “I didn’t want to work for him
but we just hit it off. He did an awful lot right setting out his stall
early with staff, telling them it was not all going to be easy.”
In between projects Scott has taken time off to travel the world and have two
children. She says she is now at Freesat for the long haul. And after?
Colleagues guess she’ll strike out for commercial business, rather than
return to the BBC.
She shrugs. “I’m in a lovely place, a mix of commercial with public sector,
very unique. It’s a learning curve for me, and if I move to a bigger
challenge, great.”
Before then, others expect a move to bring Freesat and Freeview closer
together, into one proposition – how that will play with their different
ownership structures isn’t clear. First, Scott has to prove Freesat can find
an audience, despite the competition.
“There are some big gorillas out there,” she grins.
And she is about to make their lives just that little bit more difficult.
The life of Emma Scott
VITAL STATISTICS
Born:May 21, 1968
Marital status:married, two children
School:Hatfield Comprehensive, Hertfordshire
University:Hull
First job:researcher for Austin Mitchell MP. ‘He was doing a TV programme with
Norman Tebbit on Sky called Target - it was amazing’
Pay:undisclosed
Home:Muswell Hill, north London
Car:silver Honda Jazz. ‘That always causes hilarity in the office’
Favourite film:Lost in Translation
Book:The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon Music:
The Smiths and Ryan Adams. ‘That’s Ryan without a B in front; please get that
right’
Gadget:Blackberry
Last holiday:Majorca
WORKING DAY
THE managing director of Freesat is woken at 6.30 every morning by her
two-year old daughter. “We get the kids ready, then we go,” says Emma Scott.
“My husband works at Channel 4. I like to be in Freesat’s office by 9am.”
She describes much of her job as “cajoling” - making sure equipment is
selling, signing up new channels for Freesat, sniffing out future
opportunities. She is now concentrating on the marketing push for Easter.
“It’s a crowded market. You have to make clear your proposition and sell
it.” She works two long days until 10pm, and two shorter days until 6pm each
week, and works every Friday from home. “The children are incredibly
important to me. I want to see them.”
DOWNTIME
“I DON’T have any hobbies, I have young children,” says Emma Scott. Most of
her free time is spent on family activities. “It’s the normal preschool
stuff.” She relaxes by seeing friends in north London. “Going shopping,
meeting girlfriends for lunch, having people round to supper. I also like
buying clothes but I am not a designer girl. And I do love watching TV when
I can. I’m a sucker for Strictly Come Dancing, any news programmes,
documentaries and Grand Designs.”
Scott spends her money on family holidays. “I’m not a great consumer. The only
thing I collect is Polly Pockets dolls left around the house by my kids.”
