Free Digital TV really taking off in Britain
From http://www.independent.co.uk
Growth of Freeview clouds outlook for Murdoch's Sky
By Ciar Byrne, </B>Media Correspondent
16 December 2004
With analogue switch-off in 2012 fast approaching, the latest figures suggest that Freeview, the free-to-air digital television service, is emerging as a real threat to BSkyB.
Nearly four million homes now have Freeview, according to a new report from the media regulator Ofcom, compared to just over 7.1 million households that subscribe to Sky. And while Sky signed up 53,000 new subscribers in the three months to September, more than 10 times as many people, some 590,500, went out and bought Freeview boxes.
In the run-up to Christmas, the number of Freeview boxes sold is expected to soar - a third of all annual sales happen in the second half of the final quarter of the year. The price of boxes has rapidly fallen, leading to an increase in demand - it is now possible to pick up a Freeview box for around £40 and one in five is now bought as a gift.
The Ofcom figures show that in the quarter to September, Sky's share of digital television homes dropped from 55.2 per cent to 53.6 per cent. In contrast, Freeview's share increased 2 per cent to 28.2 per cent.
James Murdoch, Sky's chief executive, remains confident that Sky is on track to achieve its target of signing up 10 million subscribers by 2010. In the long term, Sky believes that Britain will follow the example of America and that 80 per cent of households will have pay-TV.
Many of those buying Freeview boxes are using them for second or third sets and already subscribe to Sky. Ofcom estimates that around 24 per cent of Freeview boxes sold are used in this way. But Graham Lovelace, a television consultant at Lovelace Media, believes Sky still has cause for concern.
"The very clear trend is that Freeview has increased remarkably its overall share of the digital terrestrial TV market. Sky does face a significant threat from the DTT [Digital terrestrial television] platform. But it's a very different market that is buying into Freeview than would otherwise have bought into pay-TV as offered by BSkyB," Mr Lovelace said.
Carolyn Fairburn, one of the main architects of Freeview, who has just left her post as BBC's director of strategy, believes the service has made digital switch-over in 2012 a reality, by appealing to former digital "refuseniks".
"When Freeview launched two years ago, the proportion of people who said they would never take up digital was about 35 per cent and our latest research shows that has halved to around 18 per cent. What Freeview has done is to break down these barriers, people's real resistance to going digital. I think it's one of the things that has put digital switch-over back on the map," Ms Fairburn said.
Freeview was launched in 2002 following the collapse of ITV Digital. Greg Dyke, then the director general of the BBC, put together a deal with Sky and Crown Castle to bid for the platform, believing that audiences wanted a free proposition.
At present it is the fastest- selling home entertainment product in Britain. "It is the simplicity of the idea that here is a product that makes your television do new things," said Ms Fairburn. "It is breaking the idea that digital means pay."
In Ireland, we have done NOTHING as yet about Digital TV. The company who were going to roll it out have gone bellyup over 1 year ago, and nothing at all is happening now. This is the future, yet we are pretending like it doesn't exist......:mad:
