New Sky Service To Lure Consumers From Free TV
Consumers will soon be able to receive some of BSkyB’s most popular programmes through a conventional rooftop aerial and digital terrestrial television box for a monthly subscription fee, after the company today announced that it is developing plans for the launch of such a service.
In a bid to lure customers away from free-to-air TV towards its paid content, Sky says the move to bring paid-for programmes to the DDT platform represents an attractive commercial opportunity, which would benefit from existing investments in programming and infrastructure.
The line-up of channels on the new service will offer a range of content including sports, movies, entertainment and news. The sports service will include live coverage from the Barclays Premiership and other top events. Full details, including branding, pricing and the complete channel line-up, will be revealed closer to launch.
The new service will make use of existing capacity that Sky currently uses to broadcast Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News. As a result, these channels will cease to be available free-to-air via DTT in advance of the launch of the pay-TV service.
Sky plans to broadcast its pay-TV channels on DTT using the more efficient MPEG4 compression technology, enabling the broadcast giant to offer four 24-hour video streams in place of the three Sky channels currently available, with further improvements expected in future.
To access the service, customers will buy a new set-top box, with the company anticipating that once the service has launched multiple manufacturers will have the opportunity to produce compatible set-top-boxes and other DTT receivers.
The launch is subject to approval by Ofcom of the necessary variations to licences held by Sky and National Grid Wireless, which provides DTT transmission and multiplexing services to Sky.
“We look forward to bringing some of Sky’s most popular content to digital terrestrial viewers,” said Mike Darcey, Sky’s CEO. “This will give families more choice and Increase the availability of leading content and channel brands.”
Recent forecasts from JupiterResearch predict that in the next five years, Freeview will win the majority of customers, with companies like Sky and the newly re-branded Virgin Media (see Virgin Media Launches Today) struggling to gain new subscribers.
The report estimates that there are 5.3 million households in the UK which are still only able to receive analogue television, adding that over the next five years 4.6 million households will go for Freeview’s DTT service.
Over the same period, Sky is estimated to bring in 1.2 million new households whilst Virgin is forecast to attract 700,000, with IPTV services like HomeChoice and BT Vision predicted to draw around one million (see Freeview To Be Digital Switchover Winner).
BSkyB: 020 7705 3000 www.sky.com