Sky's impacts fall 10% since Virgin row

LONDON - Sky's share of 16 to 34-year-old impacts has fallen by nearly 10% year on year since its decision to take its basic tier channels off the rival Virgin platform.

Sky's impacts fall 10% since Virgin row

The consolidated figures from Barb for the first 10 days of March show the share of Sky's wholly  owned channels, including Sky One, Sky News and Sky Sports News, fell to 28.1%, compared to 31.1% in the same period last year.

The figures include extra impacts Sky Media put on after taking over sales for the Sci Fi Channel last year.

Sky lost more than three million cable viewers when it took the decision to pull the plug on its channels, as of midnight 1 March, after failing to agree terms with Virgin.

However, despite the twin threats of losing up to £30m a year in advertising revenue and being taken to the High Court by Virgin, the satellite giant has shown no signs of backing down.

This week, Sky continued an aggressive on and off-screen marketing blitz to try to attract Virgin viewers disenchanted at losing shows such as Lost and 24, even offering existing subscribers the chance to win M&S vouchers by getting their friends to jump ship from Virgin.

Sky is facing further controversy over its plans to take its Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three channels off Freeview, and launch a set-top box that  will allow free-to-view viewers an upgrade to receive paid-for channels.

Freeview shareholders, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are lobbying Ofcom to block the move, which could see Sky quit as a shareholder in the DTT platform.

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