There is a concern that the Sky sales house Sky Media might end up owing as much as £10m. This has been accrued by media agencies committing their clients' money based on previous audience performance that has not been matched this year.
Year-on-year Barb data for the period to July 6 shows Sky One's total 30-second equivalent impacts for individuals are down 15%. The figures for 16- to 34-year-olds are down 23%, while housewives with children are down 19.5%.
A Sky spokesman said of the debt: "These are wholly speculative and wildly inaccurate figures. Sky's trading position has improved significantly over the past 12 months. We expect that trend to continue."
However, agency broadcast directors said they were monitoring the situation closely.
Chris Locke, the Starcom Group trading director, said: "The issue for Sky is partly one of managing the airtime debt before the [autumn] negotiation season starts and partly the need to sort out Sky One, because that's the channel that advertisers want. Sky One is struggling horribly and Sky needs to fix it."
John Overend, the joint managing director of the Omnicom buying giant OPera, said: "Sky has had difficulties this year because of a poorer than expected performance by Sky One. A lot of its deals depend on its performance."
The news will put pressure on Dawn Airey, the managing director of Sky Networks, who was brought in to oversee Sky's non-sports channels at the beginning of last year.
The task of reassuring broadcast directors will fall to Nick Milligan, the former deputy chief executive of Five, who joined Sky Media at the beginning of the month as its managing director.
Despite investing in programming such as 'Nip/Tuck' and '24', audience figures have continued to slip.
Another broadcast director said Sky had not scheduled or marketed its best programming properly and there were too few "banker" shows in the schedule.
For example, '24', which had built up a strong following on BBC2 on a Sunday night, was rescheduled on a Thursday on Sky One.
Sky has recently bolstered its Sky One management team. Earlier this week, Jo Wallace was brought in as the director of original programming for Sky One. She was previously the head of Sky's music channels.
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