Sky One Scores With Beckham Mistress Interview

Sky One scored high ratings last night with its screening of an exclusive interview with David Beckham’s alleged mistress and former PA, Rebecca Loos, although it was kept from the top spot by ITV which managed a narrow victory with crime drama, Murder City.

Rebecca Loos: My Story managed a viewing share of 14.3% across all multi-channel homes, a mammoth achievement for the Sky, coming within a whisker of ITV, who recorded a 14.4% share.

BBC 1 secured joint second place with Sky One despite showing its usual offering of News At Ten O’Clock, regional news and Question Time.

Sky executives will no doubt be pleased with the result, however, considering the channel usually struggles to draw viewing figures over the one million mark. The hour long interview peaked at just over two million viewers, with an average of 1.65 million, the highest rating for any satellite channel in that time slot.

Ratings may also have been hampered by the inclusion of Freeview equipped homes in the multi-channel homes category, despite them being unable to receive Sky One.

Research recently published by Lehman Brothers predicts that Sky will next month reveal just 92,000 new subscribers in the third quarter of its financial year, taking its total to 7.3 million. The figure is likely to disappoint investors as the Lehman Brothers’ report shows that subscriber rates, accounting for a 9.5% churn rate – the proportion of customers that left during the period – have fallen for the same period in the previous year (March to May 2003) when 150,000 new customers joined Sky (see BSkyB To Announce Drop In Subscriber Rates).

Sky: 08702 40 40 40 www.sky.com

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