Reporting its third-quarter results, BSkyB said it has added 250,000 new digital subscribers during the period, bringing its total customer base to 5.3m. It said that it is well on target to switch off its analogue signal in summer 2001 as planned.
The company currently has less than 250,000 analogue subscribers and its digital churn rate has stabilised at less than 10%.
Third-quarter turnover grew to £585m from £480.6m year-on-year, helped by strong advertising revenues that the company said reflects increased penetration of Sky channels by 38% in the nine months to March 31.
The company said the losses were due partly to its increasing share of the operating losses of joint ventures including a stake in Kirch, which accounted for an £86m loss. BSkyB said its share of the operating losses of joint ventures was £175m against £83m a year earlier.
The company also has to account for losses at British Interactive Broadcasting, the former consortium behind the Open interactive TV service. BSkyB has now taken full control of BIB and its results will be consolidated into BSkyB's.
Programming costs rose £151m to £829m for the nine-month period, which the group put down to higher movie acquisition costs due to its growing customer-base and the growing number of original programmes it has commissioned.
The results, issued this morning, coincided with the government's decision to approve the broadcaster's plans to take control of the 20% of Open that it does not already own, accepting certain conditions.
The minister for consumer and corporate affairs Kim Howells, acting on the advice of the director general of fair trading, said that competition concerns regarding BSkyB's takeover of Open would be circumvented if it agrees not to provide interactive services on channels that do not work on other platforms.
Open is to be integrated into BSkyB, which is highly tipped to result in the ousting of Sky director of new media John Swingewood, who was poached from BT last year. Open's managing director Jon Florsheim is expected to take over his role.