Exclusive by Patrick Avenell
SYDNEY: Last Friday, Current.com.au ran a series of stories regarding Freeview. The organisation representing the five free-to-air networks said they had met with retailers and that the response had been positive.
Upon reading this, Bing Lee general manager Phil Moujaes contacted us to voice his concerns about the upcoming switchover. Unlike Freeview CEO Robin Parkes, who believes Freeview is helping to clarify the situation surrounding digital television, Moujaes believes they are only adding to the confusion.
“It’s going to add to the confusion more because with the Government, they’re basically going to be going out there and advertising incentives and telling people to go to these stores and look for these labels. Freeview is talking about having their own labels too, and I think that’s going to get quite confusing for customers,” he said.
When asked for the Bing Lee perspective of the conflict between what the Government and Freeview are individually doing, Moujaes said, “We’re fully supportive of what the Government is doing and we are going to brief our managers and our staff and we are going to participate in the Government training.”
But on Freeview, his support waivers.
“Robin [Parkes] has been around, she certainly came to see us and have a chat to us to explain to us the whole Freeview strategy and everything else, but I still think there is a potential and risk of confusing the customers in a big way, and that’s our concern: when customers are confused, they sit back, they hold back, and that’s really not what we want as an industry.”
What’s your view on Freeview? Send me an email.