If all goes according to plan, SKY Pacific customers could soon see the return of the popular Discovery channel.

The new owners of the pay television channel, Digicel Fiji, have confirmed they are looking at this as part of the SKY Pacific lineup.

Digicel Fiji chief executive, Darren McLean, in an interview with the Fiji Sun said they had noted the outcry from customers when Discovery Channel was taken off a few years back.

But, he emphasised, bringing Discovery would mean securing real premium content and might mean customers may have to pay a few extra dollars.

He, however, said based on the conversations he has had with SKY Pacific customers, they would be willing to pay a little extra for that particular channel.

“The decision hasn’t been made yet but I see the possibility of bringing that back in a few months,” Mr McLean said.

Until the rights for Discovery is secured and proper analysis is done, Mr McLean said there are no immediate plans to make any changes to subscription prices.

Mr McLean highlighted providing pay television services was expensive business and the decisions on how and what to bring in and what to retire was a balancing act.

By this, he meant they are now analysing the least popular channel and would make a decision whether there is a possibility of just replacing the least popular ones with something better.

Custom-made packages

We asked Mr McLean whether Digicel would consider creating custom-made or tailor-made packages for SKY Pacific customers where customers can opt for having access to only their favourite channels.

Mr McLean said they have definitely considered that but they don’t want to get into that in their first year of operating SKY Pacific.

“I think there is a opportunity there to create some packages and I would definitely not rule that out,” he said.

“But for the first year, we will leave it as a single package and then see how it goes from there.

“It’s also easy to make mistakes as well and package up the wrong stuff or get the packages wrong.

“I can see from feedback we get around content, the Fijians are very bonded with their programmes.

“If we try to break those apart, we might cause issues.”

Mr McLean said there is a lot of additional research that would need to go into this.

“I think in the future it is somewhat unavoidable and you would have to do that as the market matures,” he said.

“Our focus right now is fine tuning some of those higher end content and getting it in.”

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