Sky+ In Two Million Homes

Sky has announced that the total number of Sky+ boxes installed in customers’ homes has broken through two million for the first time.

The number of Sky+ boxes grew by more than 50% in 2006, which means that Sky is on its way to pass its target of 25% Sky+ penetration in advance of the original schedule of 2010.

In November, Merrill Lynch forecast that Sky+ will have 2.8 million subscribers by 2010 (31% penetration), up from the 1.7 million recorded in Q1 2006, and higher than Sky’s own forecast of 25% penetration by 2010.

Sky says that almost 5 million viewers are using Sky+ to record, pause and rewind live TV.

Sky plans to introduce several new enhancements to Sky+ in 2007 which it says will revolutionise the TV experience even further. These innovations will include the ability to use the internet to set a recording on your Sky+ box when you are away from home. Customers will be able to programme their box remotely after logging on to www.sky.com.

Also in 2007, Sky will introduce a new enhancement giving Sky+ customers the chance to watch a selection of the week’s best programmes on-demand.

The service will be available to over one million Sky+ and Sky HD customers from launch, making use of additional recording capacity on the hard drive of more recent boxes.

Sky has also published data, taken from the Sky View research panel, which reveals that drama is the genre of programming most frequently recorded by Sky+ customers, accounting for 39.3% of all time-shifted viewing.

Other popular genres are documentaries (14.9%), entertainment (13.0%) and movies (9.5%). In contrast, some genres of content remain at their most popular when consumed live. News and weather account for just 0.6% of time-shifted viewing by Sky+ viewers, while current affairs programmes account for 1.2%.

The trends picked up by Sky are reflected in the ranking of channels whose programming is subject to most time-shifting by Sky+ viewers, says the broadcaster.

Source: Sky View

In addition, the Sky View research shows that in Sky+ households, time-shifting accounts for 22% of all viewing of programmes originally scheduled between 9pm and 10pm and 17% of all viewing of programmes scheduled between 10pm and 11pm.

Jeremy Darroch, Sky’s Chief Financial Officer, said: “Sky+ has changed the way millions of people watch TV. In its own way, Sky+ has as dramatic an effect on the experience of TV as the iPod has with music. There’s no going back once you’ve experienced the ability to take control over the TV schedules and we’re planning new innovations in 2007 to make Sky+ even better.

“Passing the milestone of 2 million Sky+ boxes keeps us on track to break through our target of 25% penetration well ahead of schedule. The rapid growth of Sky+ shows strong customer demand for additional services and gives us great confidence as our multi-product strategy moves forward this year.”

Sky: 08702 40 40 40 www.sky.com