Freeview Sales Soar In Run Up To Christmas
The runaway success of Freeview showed no signs of slowing in the run up to Christmas with sales of set top decoder boxes running at more than 200,000 during December.
Estimates show that the increased demand for Freeview over the festive period has pushed the number of UK digital terrestrial viewers towards the 2.5 million mark, making it BSkyB’s biggest competitor in the multi-channel market.
Sales of the service, which rose out of the ashes of the failed ITV Digital in October 2002, look set to continue into the New Year and the price of receivers is expected to fall in the January sales.
Commenting on the figures, a spokeswoman for the BBC said: “From the end of October onwards we were finding that weekly sales figures were rising considerably. By the second week of November they were increasing exponentially and were running at more than 100,000 a week.”
She added: “We expect retailers to run price promotions over the New Year period, which will drive people pick up Freeview boxes. We have no estimates as to what sales might be on a weekly basis, but we expect them to be very good.”
Last month it was revealed that the success of Freeview, which offers viewers up to 30 free-to-air channels, may have put the Government back on track to reach its target of switching off the analogue television signal by the proposed 2010 deadline (see Digital TV Now In More Than Half Of UK Households).
More than half of British households now receive multi-channel services and the latest figures show that non-terrestrial channels saw their combined share of viewing increase by 1.5% during 2003 to reach 23.6%, equalling ITV1 for the first time (see Channel 4 Sees Audience Share Dip During 2003).
The BBC plans to continue promoting the availability of its new digital channels via Freeview and other non-terrestrial platforms throughout the year. Forecasts from Merrill Lynch suggest that digital terrestrial television will be available in almost 3 million UK homes by the end of this year.
BBC: 020 8743 8000 www.bbc.co.uk
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