Gordon Robson's mobile ambition
Article Date: Jun 03 2005
Gordon Robson developed the UK’s first multi-chat telephone system, invented the concept of newspaper phone services and even pioneered telephone voting for television. Now he’s at the helm of Stream Group trying to reinvent the way we bank, pay bills and even place bets.
Gordon Robson’s preferred meeting place in London is Home House, the exclusive, uber-chic members’ club on Portman Square whose clientele is a veritable who’s who of the capital’s media and entertainment elite.
On my arrival he leads me through a labyrinth of oak-panelled rooms and corridors, before settling for a table under an expansive window on the first floor. We are the only people in the room – if you exclude the almost invisible staff.
‘I come here because my office is too small and too crowded. It’s private, quiet and discreet – the ideal place to conduct business when you’re heading a public company.’
His company is Stream Group, an AIM-listed venture that he hopes to build into a dominant global player in the ever-evolving world of mobile telephone services.
Thus far, he is not doing badly. His company has doubled in size in the last three years, having ploughed a very profitable furrow in the cut-throat world of chat lines, ringtones and mobile images. This, however, is only the start of the Stream journey. His end goal is to attain a strategic position in the burgeoning world of mobile financial and leisure services – ‘the real telecoms holy grail’.
An unlikely 80s hero
Few are betting against Robson succeeding, largely because there is probably no other entrepreneur in the UK who knows so much about this sector – nor who has been so instrumental in its growth.
Back in 1984, having realized that he ‘probably wouldn’t make it as a musician’, he joined BT, which had just been privatised by Thatcher’s Conservative Government.
‘I was basically approached by BT to help set up premium rate chat and entertainment services. The company was very innovative back then and within a short space of time we had formed Talkabout. It was the first multi-chat entertainment service of its kind.’
Further innovations followed, such as Dial a Disc (consumers would phone up to listen to their favourite track, introduced by pop stars such as Kim Wilde) and Radio on the Phone (‘Mike Smith would come to our office and create clips of very popular music,’ he says).
It might all sound rather quaint now, but it was a highly attractive and high margin line of income for BT at the time.
Chasing the tabloids
Through his friend Martin Dunn, the then journalist on The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre column, Robson was able to set up a meeting with Kelvin Mackenzie and pitched the idea of The Sun running telephone entertainment and information services.
‘Kelvin has a certain reputation, but he is every inch the entrepreneur. He could see immediately how popular and profitable premium telephone services could be and decided to run with it there and then.’ Thus was born the astrological, weather and other phone products all newspapers now operate.
The invention of the phone-in
Having conquered newspapers, he turned his attention to television, where Robson and his team came up with the idea of running telephone-voting services for entertainment programmes.
The first one launched in the UK was for the final of ITV’s New Faces in 1986. Such was the success of this event that the phone network collapsed under the weight of calls. However, the technology was quickly improved, a vastly bigger phone line platform built and within a short space of time all the major networks were beating a path to the telephone voting door – led by the BBC and its Eurovision Song Contest show.
