With Sky Atlantic arriving on Virgin Media TV this week, HBO Max barely a week old, and Virgin’s TV service changing faster than it has in years, we sat down with the person responsible for all of it.
David Bouchier is Chief TV and Entertainment Officer at Virgin Media O2 – which is a corporate way of saying he’s the person responsible for what lands on your Virgin TV box, what it eventually costs, and what the whole thing looks like going forward.
Sky Atlantic goes live this week on Channel 111 for eligible Virgin TV customers – and that was just the starting point.
The conversation covered a lot of ground – from the long-awaited Sky Atlantic launch, to where HBO Max leaves Virgin customers, to whether recording is really dead, to what Virgin Media actually thinks it is as a TV company.
Why Sky Atlantic, Why Now
A quick bit of context first, for anyone coming to Virgin Media’s TV service fresh: Virgin Media is primarily a broadband provider – and its TV service is built around that.
The TV boxes – currently the TV 360, a traditional cable-connected box with recording capabilities, and the newer Stream box, which delivers everything over broadband – are only available to Virgin Media broadband customers.
TV bundles sit on top of the broadband subscription and include a mix of Sky channels, sports channels, Freeview channels, and access to streaming apps like Netflix and Disney+.
It’s a broad offering – just not one with anything truly exclusive to Virgin itself.
Until recently, one notable gap in that lineup was Sky Atlantic – the home of prestige HBO dramas and high-profile Sky originals. Virgin customers who wanted it had to pay separately for a NOW subscription, or go without. That changes this week.
So why now? Virgin Media customers have been asking for Sky Atlantic for years, and Bouchier’s answer is essentially that the market changed enough to make it worthwhile for both sides.
“Sky had a view of how Sky Atlantic sat in their portfolio in terms of driving an exclusive message for them,” he said, “whereas now they see the value of bringing in a million viewers on day one who will be able to enjoy the programming.”
In other words, exclusivity was worth more to Sky when the TV landscape was simpler. Now, with streaming services multiplying and viewers having more choices than ever, getting Sky Atlantic in front of more eyeballs makes more sense than keeping it behind a wall.
It’s a reasonable explanation – and it also helps that the channel Virgin customers are finally getting isn’t quite the Sky Atlantic of old.
As we’ve written before, the golden era of Sky Atlantic – when it was the exclusive UK home of The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, and Succession – is largely behind us.
The full back catalogues of those shows now live on HBO Max, not on the channel. Sky Atlantic today is a window for select new episodes, not a comprehensive home for HBO content.
That’s not to say it isn’t still worth having – Under Salt Marsh, Amadeus, new seasons of The Last of Us and The White Lotus – there’s plenty on it. But it’s worth going in with realistic expectations.
The HBO Max Question
Which brings us to the more complicated topic of HBO Max itself – which launched in the UK on March 26, just days before Sky Atlantic arrives on Virgin.
Sky customers get HBO Max Basic with Ads bundled into their Sky Ultimate TV subscription at no extra cost. EE TV customers get it via NOW as part of their Entertainment bundle.
Virgin Media customers get… nothing bundled. The Stream and TV 360 boxes do support the HBO Max app, but customers need to pay the standard price for HBO Max, just like anyone else, starting from £4.99 a month, and the service doesn’t even qualify for Virgin’s 10% Flex credit discount.
I put this to Bouchier directly, noting that customers were already asking why they weren’t getting a similar deal.
His response was to draw a distinction between “hard bundling” and “soft bundling” – Virgin’s approach, he said, is to make HBO Max available to subscribe to through your Virgin box, rather than wrapping it into the package price.
He also pushed back on the idea that Virgin customers are missing out on much.
His argument runs roughly like this: the big returning HBO shows – The White Lotus, The Last of Us, House of the Dragon – will continue to air on Sky Atlantic. New Warner Bros. films will continue to land on Sky Cinema. And even deep library titles like Friends air on Comedy Central.
So the truly exclusive HBO Max content, he suggested, is a narrower slice than people might assume.
It’s a fair point – up to a point. But it sidesteps something important: new HBO originals that haven’t previously aired on Sky won’t automatically come to Sky Atlantic.
The Pitt – the Emmy-winning medical drama starring Noah Wyle, and arguably HBO Max’s biggest UK launch title – is a perfect example.
It’s not on Sky Atlantic. It’s not on Sky Cinema. It’s on HBO Max, and HBO Max only. And for Virgin customers, that means paying separately.
There’s also a longer-term question that Bouchier’s answer didn’t fully address. Right now, established HBO franchises continue on Sky Atlantic because of existing long-term deals between Sky and Warner Bros. Discovery.
But as those deals eventually run their course, there’s no guarantee that new HBO shows – shows that don’t yet exist – will land on Sky Atlantic at all.
In two or three years, Sky Atlantic’s HBO slate could look considerably thinner. It’s a question for Sky as much as Virgin – but it’s worth keeping in mind when assessing the long-term value of what Virgin customers are getting.
Bouchier’s broader argument is that Virgin deliberately avoids the “all-you-can-eat” approach.
“We don’t hear from our customers that they’re clamouring for more,” he said, pointing to the cost of living pressures that make large bundled packages a harder sell. “And I know from my own experience that there really is a lot of programming out there.
“You’re not short of things to find – if anything, you’re struggling to realise which service you subscribe to and what you’re viewing on which service.”
It’s a coherent position – but it does leave Virgin customers in a noticeably different place to Sky subscribers when it comes to HBO content.
Virgin As Curator – Not Creator
One of the more interesting threads in the conversation was Bouchier’s articulation of what Virgin Media actually is as a TV company – because the honest answer is that it isn’t quite a TV company in the traditional sense.
Virgin doesn’t commission shows. It doesn’t buy Premier League rights. It doesn’t have anything that’s truly exclusive to its platform.
What it has is Sky and other premium channels, Freeview channels, Netflix, and a growing list of streaming apps and FAST channels, all brought together in one place.
I asked him directly whether Virgin even considers itself to be in the TV business, or whether TV is more of a bonus on top of broadband. His answer was unambiguous: “I’m very much in the TV business.”
But his definition of that is worth unpacking. “Being a curator, we have a rule that we want to be able to say to people that A to Z, 90% of what they really want to watch will be on our service,” he said.
The model isn’t to spend four to six million dollars an episode on original programming – it’s to make sure the best of what others produce is available, well-organised, and easy to find.
He framed this in contrast to what he called “aggregated services that just want volume” – platforms that bulk up their content offering without much thought for what customers actually want.
Virgin’s approach to FAST channels is a good example of this in practice. Rather than loading up the EPG with hundreds of channels, they’ve curated a selection of more than 40 channels, focused on genres – mystery, crime, history – that their customers actually watch.
He noted that on some other platforms, the FAST channels that break through tend to be single-IP channels built around a familiar show – Baywatch, Escape to the Country – because that’s what catches the eye. Virgin’s curated approach, he argues, goes deeper than that.
It’s a coherent philosophy – and one that puts Virgin in a different lane to Sky, which does commission, does buy sports rights, and has now taken the step of hard-bundling HBO Max (and Disney+, and hayu, and Netflix…)
The implicit argument from Virgin is: Sky does it all, and charges accordingly. We pick the best of what’s out there, keep it manageable, and pass the saving on.
Whether that’s a principled position or a practical one – or both – probably depends on how you feel about your Virgin Media bill.
Bouchier also made an interesting observation about how customers talk about TV.
“What is a TV business?” he said. “We like to use the word ‘entertainment business’ – because if you do some customer research and they say ‘I don’t watch TV anymore’ – and you say ‘but do you watch Netflix?’ – ‘oh, yeah, of course I watch Netflix.'”
The word “TV”, he suggested, has become almost too narrow – and Virgin would rather be seen as your entertainment destination than get hung up on the label.
The Recording Debate
For some Virgin customers, the most contentious change of the past year has had nothing to do with streaming services.
It’s the fact that the Stream box – which can’t directly record anything – is now the default hardware for all new TV customers, with the TV 360 pushed to a “by request only” option that may also come with an installation fee.
I pressed Bouchier on this, particularly given that some readers feel strongly about recording. His response involved a statistic that’s worth sitting with: according to Virgin’s own data, 80% of recordings are set and never actually watched.
It’s a striking claim – and it does suggest that for many customers, recording functions more as a safety net than a genuine viewing habit.
He also pointed to Virgin’s catch-up feature, which effectively turns the EPG into a backwards-scrolling guide, letting you catch programmes that aired in the past without needing to have recorded them in advance (similar to what’s available on Freely and Sky Stream).
That said, the broader context is worth keeping in mind. Ofcom’s Media Nations 2025 report found that, for the first time, UK viewers now spend more time watching broadcaster on-demand services than watching recorded playback – 25 minutes per day versus 23 minutes.
The direction of travel is clear, and streaming is the future whether we like it or not.
But “the direction of travel” is cold comfort if you’re a shift worker who relies on recording of channels that don’t have an on-demand service, or someone who specifically wants to skip adverts.
Bouchier acknowledged this: “Yes, there will always be people who want to record, and yes, we keep making that available.”
The TV 360 isn’t going away – there are still 1.5 million of them deployed across the network, he confirmed – it’s just no longer what you get automatically when you sign up.
And Virgin Media’s Stream does allow some cloud-recording, but it’s limited to a selection of channels (again, similar to Sky’s Stream box.)
But one counterargument is that the EE TV Box Pro manages to offer both streaming and recording in a single device. So it’s not as if the two are mutually exclusive.
The Bigger Picture
Virgin Media’s Stream box already delivers Freeview channels over broadband – which is essentially what Freely does too, just through a different platform.
Freely is the new IP-based successor to Freeview, now available on its own standalone boxes, and the obvious question is whether Virgin has ever considered combining the two – a Stream box that’s also Freely-enabled, bringing together Virgin’s TV service and the public service broadcaster offering in one place.
Bouchier’s answer was a polite but firm no. His view is that Freely exists to solve a problem that Virgin customers simply don’t have.
The platform was designed to give public service broadcasters better visibility on connected TVs that aren’t connected to an aerial – but Virgin boxes are connected to Virgin’s own network, so that problem doesn’t apply. “I can see no value in adding that Freely capability,” he said.
Similarly straightforward was his answer on whether the Stream box could ever be made available to non-Virgin broadband customers – the way Sky Stream is available to anyone, regardless of who their broadband provider is.
It won’t be, at least not by design. The Stream box is built around Virgin’s network and is part of the broadband proposition, and Bouchier sees that as a feature rather than a limitation.
Perhaps the most interesting closing thought was his answer to what Virgin TV doesn’t get enough credit for.
Rather than reaching for a headline feature, he pointed to something more subtle – the way the platform bridges linear and on-demand viewing without forcing customers to choose between the two.
“We are equally committed to both,” he said. The numbers back that up: 40% of Virgin TV customers engage primarily with on-demand, while 60% lean towards linear.
That’s a more even split than you might expect from a company that’s been loudly pushing streaming for the past few years – and it says something about a platform that still has two dedicated remote buttons to take you straight back to live TV, even as it adds FAST channels and streaming apps at a steady pace.
Whether you agree with the choices Virgin has made over the past year or not, the direction is pretty clear: streaming-first, curation over creation, and content defined by range rather than exclusivity.
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I can see them including Disney+ with ads at some stage, can already add Standard or Premium directly to your Virgin bill