Boost For Top Up TV As Subscriber Figures Revealed
Recently launched pay-television service Top Up TV looks set to ape the success enjoyed by Freeview after revealing yesterday that it had signed up 20,000 subscribers in its first month.
The digital terrestrial service, run by two former BSkyB executives, has a break-even target of 250,000, which it hopes to achieve by tapping into the subscriber base of the now-defunct ITV Digital.
David Chance, chairman of Top Up TV and former BSkyB executive, is confident the ten-channel service is on track to make a profit within the next two years. He said: “We announced we would break even in about two years and we should be able to deliver.”
He expects almost half of Top Up TV’s customers to sign up in the three months leading up to Christmas, which is traditionally a strong time for the pay-television market. Growth also looks set to increase once Freeview boxes that can take top-up cards go on sale next month.
Top Up TV offers customers a range of premium entertainment channels including E4, UKTV Gold and the Discovery Channel, for a subscription fee of £7.99 a month, on top of an initial connection charge of £20.
Chance said: “Customers like the channel line-up and they like the price point. It is a segment that’s difficult for the traditional players to service at a profit because we only have four employees.”
The fledgling digital terrestrial platform recently announced that it had appointed Matt Seaman as its sales and marketing director following his defection from Freeview earlier this year. Top Up now plans to use his experience to boost its subscriber numbers (see Top Up TV Confirms Appointment Of Freeview Manager).
Forecasts from the BBC suggest that Top Up TV will be purchased by 15% of Freeview customers by 2010. This is good news for the pay-TV service given that Informa Media Group expects that around 17 million people will have Freeview by the end of the decade.
Freeview is currently the fastest growing multi-channel platform in the UK and the latest figures from the IPA show that the ongoing success of the digital terrestrial service helped push the number of UK homes with access to multi-channel television to 11.5 million in the first quarter of this year (see Freeview Pushes UK Multi-Channel Homes To 11.5 Million).
Top Up TV: 08700 543 210 www.topup.tv
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