Potentially the most disruptive story of the year in TV has been Dish’s launch of their “Hopper,” an update to their set-top-box that allows you to automatically skip commercials across up to six prime-time channels for up to eight days after the shows have aired. They’ve already been sued and are in court now with ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. Boldly, they’ve chosen to go all out with their new product geared at improving their customers’ experience, focusing their marketing on this exciting, disruptive new hardware. We spoke to Vivek Khemka about the company’s bold move to launch the Hopper and why he believes it will benefit the networks.
Building a team for three years to launch the Hopper:
Khemka, who led the product team the launched Hopper, has also served as the interim CMO for the company. He’s been with the company since 2009 and described the Echostar split that took Slingbox with it. “In June 2009, when Dish and Echostar split, most people went onto Echostar side – I spent the last three years building up the team, formulating our product strategy on TV everywhere, shaping the Hopper product and marketing,” he told Lost Remote. “I don’t want to take credit for everything, there’s a whole bunch of people, I formulate,” he added.
Dish has been at the forefront of DVR innovation:
Khemka described how they’re always striving to build a better experience for customers. “We were the first to launch the thirty second skip on the remote control – it’s not a fast forward or a flip forward, we always looked at how do you make the customer experience better as they’re watching they’re DVR, we support fast forward at multiple rates from 2x to 300x,” he described. As any DVR user knows, even the 30-second skip is often frustrating. “One thing we’ve noticed is that consumers love to skip commercials, even with the 30 second skip,” Khemka explained.
How does the tech work behind the Hopper?
“We haven’t been talking about that much, it’s definitely a patented technology that requires our satellite and set top box,” he told Lost Remote. It doesn’t seem he has to worry about competitors stealing their technology anytime soon, unless they also decide to face legal problems.
How social plays a role in Dish’s products:
“One of the big challenges is search and discovery, when you look at the amount of content on the Hopper for example, we have 15,000 movies and TV shows on demand, 220 channels and a hard drive you can record days and days,” he told Lost Remote. “The minute I turn on my television I’m bombarded with so many challenges, we see social media as helping you navigate,” he explained.
The problems his team are trying to tackle:
He explained TV challenges families face. “The biggest challenge is that television is a family experience so to speak,” he described. “My wife and I might be watching TV together, it doesn’t know that it’s me watching, my wife watching or my kids watching – I think one thing they’re trying to nail down is how does the concept of personalization work with TV when there are multiple people.” He added that, “that’s the nut they’re trying to crack – we’re working on something and will have something at the end of the year.”
Dish’s apps:
“In the last 30 plus days we made huge improvements to our iPad app. The iPad app, allows you to watch all your live TV, all your DVR, all your prime time anytime and all the on-demand – you can watch anywhere you have an Internet connection,” he told Lost Remote. He added that, “we built into the sling app technology into the dish app, Echostar is still the supplier of all our equipment, while we’re separate companies, we still work closely together.” This makes a lot of sense, instead of having to cut separate deals with all of the content providers, they make the Sling technology available so everything you’re paying for in a subscription is available anywhere and anytime (as long as you have internet).
What has customer feedback about the Hopper been?
“Customers love it – the way we looked at it, auto hop with Primetime Anytime will actually increase viewership of a primetime show and will get them to watch same day because auto hop is only available the day after,” he told Lost Remote, describing how this could actually benefit first-run viewership for the networks. (By the way, Dish recently made some tweaks which could help its court case. For example, users now pick which networks to include in Primetime Anytime, instead of having them all included automatically.)
“We’re making the discovery of broadcast shows much easier,” he added. “I like broadcast shows, just record them for me, so I don’t have to worry about whether I recorded them.” He further added about social that “one of the great things of Primetime Anytime, is someone will say did you watch the show last night, that’s as intimate a social media experience as you can have,” he explained. “You can go back home and click on your Primetime Anytime feature and watch it right there.”
Why you should pay attention to Dish over the next year:
Under Khemka’s leadership, Dish — the third largest MSO — seems to be taking bold risks to improve the set top box for consumers that’s already upsetting the broadcast networks. At the same time, Rokus, Boxees and Apple TVs have won the hearts of tech-savvy consumers who are tired of their out dated and overpriced set-top boxes. Dish is also at odds with AMC who are publicly trying to get around them.