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Foxtel: revenue up, more channels coming

Foxtel promises television downloads and more channels by the end of the year.

foxtel-logo22Foxtel yesterday reported a 19 per cent rise in first-half operating profit to $196 million, and a 13per cent rise in revenue.

Recording a strong profit rise for the December half, its chief executive officer Kim Williams told The Australian yesterday that he remained concerned about the impact of the fading economy on growth for the rest of the financial year.

“Naturally, the global crisis is having a big impact on consumer confidence, and consumer uncertainty translates into consumer indecision. The challenge for us is to speak to subscribers openly about what their concerns are,” he said.

Foxtel was putting “a lot of effort into customer attention”, given the confronting outlook, Mr Williams said.

And the company is tracking “slightly ahead of last year” for January and February.

In the December half included a rise in per-subscriber yields and churn (disconnections) fell to an annualised rate of 13.3 per cent, 0.2per cent lower than last year. New subscriber additions for the period were in line with a year earlier, despite the tougher economic conditions. Subscription revenue rose 11per cent to $762 million for the half.

Users of the iQ have lower churn rates than non-users.

Mr Williams said Foxtel would offer “broadband extensions of the product” by the fourth quarter of this year, which would allow subscribers to download 10 to 20 favourite Foxtel programs on their service to computers.

He said the company was likely to launch 20-plus new channels by the end of the year, courtesy of the additional bandwidth from a new Optus satellite.

Foxtel said it had achieved a 59% share of viewing in subscription TV homes during the second half of 2008, despite the impact of the Beijing Olympics. Its High Definition service, rolled out in June last year, had attracted more than 85,000 subscribers by the end of 2008.

Source: The Australian, B&T

59 Responses

  1. thesportsfreak, Fox don’t have the rights to show Friday night football live. Seven (AFL) and Nine (NRL) do. The FTA networks would never allow Fox to show the games live and erode their own ratings…

  2. (This could be a long comment… so apologies from the start)
    One of the channels needs to carry It’s A Knockout! I’ll keep campaigning for it until it happens!
    Meanwhile, 2nd ESPN channel sounds like it could be a goer. They’ve got about 10 channels in the US – can’t see why they wouldn’t launch a second channel in Aus.
    Here’s something Foxtel should do: Give people in AFL states the ability to pay to watch Friday Night Football live! Example – In Round 2 in WA, Friday Night Football will begin at 7:30pm EDT. The game gets shown at 8:30pm in all traditional AFL states, meaning WA will end up getting the game delayed by four hours!!!!! Now, I’d pay $6.95 to watch that live… or at least the ability to record it and watch it when I get home.
    Moving on… I’m not sure what the point in having a [V]3 channel would be. They only have 3 or 4 faces on [V] and don’t do any original programming on [V]2… so what’s the point in [V]3? Unless they bring back Club[V]? Then they’d be on a winner! I imagine Sky News would have to go into 16×9 in the not too distant future as well. Something they should be doing is producing more shows like 180 (with Paul Murray). It’s good to watch. Meanwhile, I’d love it if GWN and WIN (Reg WA) could be rebroadcast on Foxtel. Neither are in digital because neither of them can come together and hurry the hell up in getting it off the ground, but for goodness sakes, rebroadcast the analogue signal on Foxtel!!!

  3. Hmm, the majority of those channels would probably be the same ones just in HD, but I’d love to see HBO make a major push into the Australian market, and see FX come back. I mean, Fox does an okay job, but having the US version here would be great.

    But like someone said, even though it would be a complete impossibility, it would be amazing to have the US FTA channels on Foxtel.

  4. Completely agree with Wazza on the channel numbers. Especially if Foxtel re-broadcasts the extra FTA channels when they come. The “0” hundreds could be the FTA channels with the same digital channel as they have on FTA, the “1” hundreds the entertainment channels, the “2” hundreds Foxtel HD’s, etc… And same with consistancy on +2’s.

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